This particular blog is dedicated to my aunt, Theresa Hardin Marsh, who told me that I needed to tell my grandmother’s story. Sadly, before the story could come anywhere near fruition, my aunt passed away. I will be the first to admit that my aunt and my grandmother were both my primary muses. When my aunt died, I stopped working on my books, and when grandma died, I found I couldn’t write anything more than short information pieces. As John Legend says in his song “All of Me”: “you’re my downfall/you’re my muse/my worse distraction/my rhythm and blues.” Yes, I know JL’s song was directed at a lover, but what you need to understand is that my grandmother was the greatest love of my life. One clue that she was a life’s blessing and an angel personified was that she was born on Valentine’s Day. What could signify love more than that? If you believe in astrology, or even in the fact that people born in the same season and month have similar traits, you will understand that as a February baby, an Aquarian, the water sign, my grandmother epitomized the same quality of water: soothing and calming, with this ability to wash over you. My uncle will contend that she was jealous when it came to my grandfather and displayed a temper, but this just tells me that she loved fiercely. Water rages at times too.
What’s funny is that although I had lived next door to my grandmother since I was two, I didn’t get to really start knowing her until I was ten years old. To be totally honest, there is very little of my life that I remember in my childhood, other than mental snapshots of memories. But one thing that I do remember is that until age ten, I saw my grandmother as the woman in the kitchen who cooked, made great cakes, whistled an unknown tune, and acted as disciplinarian in contrast to my grandfather. Granddad (or Daddy Welford as we called him) was everything a young girl could have dreamed of in a father: a tall man that worked with his hands, constructing the storage shed and shelves where he kept his tools and my grandmother’s canned goods, the woodshed where piles of cut and split wood became our childhood obstacle course, and even a wheelbarrow which to this day, I want to reconstruct for my own yard. My grandfather was tall and cocoa brown, and his trademark was one of tucker caps that resemble baseball caps except they have the plastic mesh in the back. He would always keep the snaps real tight and wear it at a crooked angle on his head; to this day, a few of my male relatives do the same thing. But the best thing about my grandfather to a little girl like me is that we would play a little game: I’d come in the house and peek around the corner until I heard him bellow “Candi-Mandy!” and then I’d go barreling full-speed into him, whether he’d be sitting in his wooden chair at the table or stooping down to greet me as he enveloped me in a tight hug. You would have thought that I was his only grandchild, but as I told you in the previous blog, I have a lot of cousins (I’ll run down the numbers later). I was enamored of my grandfather, so much so that his presence blinded me to my grandmother’s personality.
It wasn’t until after his death that I started really getting to know my grandmother, who was known to all as Manita, a culmination of Ma and her first name, Anita. One of the factors that helped me get to know her better was the way she took in all her family members. When my grandparents knew that my mom was in a bad marriage, they “rescued” her and her two children: me and my brother, and set them up in the old family home next door. At the time, my three of my cousins lived with them. After two graduated and moved on, my aunt and her three children came to live with her. On the other side of my grandmother’s house was my uncle (talked about in my “Life Goes On” post) who had two older children. Then there were the cousins who would visit for the summer. In all, there were nine steady cousins during the school year, plus another 4-10 that would visit at different intervals. Add to that the fact that many of our cousins’ friends would come to visit, plus Manita’s other children, grown grandkids, neighbors, their friends and classmates, AND Manita’s siblings and cousins and friends and missionary cohorts and church members and their families, and there is this large mosaic of folk. So there was never any lack of company. We were rich in relationships if nothing else.
No description of my grandmother would be complete without a physical description of her. Whereas my grandfather was tall, lean, and chocolate, my grandmother was just the opposite. Grandmother never quite cleared over 5’5” and when I was growing up, she had an ample figure that looked pretty good for having birthed 13 children. As for her complexion, she and all her siblings were very fair skinned; in their younger days, all of them could have successfully passed for tanned white people. They were what would most accurately be called quadroons: one quarter black and the rest of mixed heritage tracing all the way back to England. My grandmother and at least two of her siblings (two passed before I ever knew them) had hazel eyes. Amazingly enough, these hazel eyes keep popping up in later generations; my cousin Ashley of the “Mommy Sings the Blues” blog is one and so far, there are another seven that I can think of.
Diminutive though my grandmother was, she was powerful. She didn’t yell much, but when she did, she could be heard at least a quarter mile away (usually she would reserve that call for when one of the children under her care was in trouble). Her mindset was also strong: to my grandmother, there was nothing stronger than family, regardless of whether it was extended, by marriage, or by divorce. I can always remember Manita on the phone talking to, writing to or receiving a letter from some relative, some of which, I rarely recall by face. For instance, she kept in contact with my great aunt on my grandfather’s side (her sister-in-law) Aunt Edith, who lived in New Jersey (or New York).
On top of being a mother and great communicator, she also worked outside of the home. Keep in mind, being born in 1913, she grew up in a time when the modern conveniences just didn’t exist. She talked to me about not having electricity and working by candlelight and kerosene lamp. She talked of how their means of preserving food was either through canning, curing, or purchasing ice blocks. She reminded me constantly of the conveniences that she did not have. There were no mass market grocery chains where almost every item was just a drop in the basket. To feed the family, the livestock had to be slaughtered, and the vegetables had to planted and picked and seasonal fruit was exactly that. Dry goods existed in bulk, but milk came either from the cows or from the milk man’s delivery. She reminded me that there were no such things as disposable diapers and that all had to washed and reused. She lived through the Great Depression; as one of the few black landowners in the county, they were able to survive. She used to regale me with stories of how she worked at a tomato factory and shucking oysters, and of the small wages that these occupations earned. Growing up there, I remember my grandfather still stayed close to the land with his own garden. I remember helping plant seeds in the early spring and picking the vegetables during the harvest time.
And man, could she cook! One of the traditions that I remember most frequently is that whenever it was someone’s birthday, that person would get his or her favorite cake. I still remember that one of the constant favorites of almost everyone’s was a yellow layer cake with chocolate frosting. Although in her latter years, she started relying more heavily on boxed cake mixes, my grandmother could also make cakes from scratch with the old fashioned measurements of a “bit,” a “pinch,” and the “about a __of this.” This was great for eating, but not so much for following a recipe. I remember asking her for a recipe for pound cake (my favorite) over the phone. What would have been fluffy buttery delightfulness in her hands became a freakishly heavy cinderblock that thudded to the bottom of my trash can at the end of my experiment. To this day, I’m sure my neighbors thought I had fallen. I won’t even begin to discuss the fact that the cake tasted like I’d poured rosemary in it.
But cakes weren’t her only specialty. I can remember my grandmother canning peaches, making grape jelly, homemade apple sauce, and blackberry dumplings. I can remember her fried chicken and that she went by the old school rules that the ratio of chicken was proportionate to your size and age: granddaddy would get the breast and the youngest children the wings. I can remember her mashed potatoes and how she told me how to make it so that they would not get stiff after cooling. I’m happy to say that I can replicate her corn pudding and thanks to her make a pretty good sweet potato pie (although I only came super close to hers one year). And I can remember her breakfasts: everything from pancakes to sausage with sage to broiled fish and potatoes, things that just have me reaching back into nostalgia and shaking my head when I think of them.
Like my grandfather, my grandmother had this penchant for letting people know they were special. She remembered almost everyone’s birthday, and this was quite a feat. As I stated earlier, she had 13 children. At the present time she has 32 grandkids, and most of us have kids making that number over 50; and on top of that, some of those kids have kids [there are at least a dozen]). I can easily say that her legacy spans over five generations, and I can more easily say that she had a hand in raising a good percentage of the 3rd and 4th generation. I know for certain that she raised me, even though I lived with my mother. Whenever I or any of my cousins ever had any grumbling about the shortcomings of our parents (and there were quite a few), my grandmother would remind us that regardless of their flaws, they were still our only set, and that without them, we would not be here. This is just another instance of the love and compassion she always showed.
So many of my memories from my childhood and beyond are wrapped around my grandmother. Even as I grew older and moved away, there was always random day during the week where I would call into work just because I had this overwhelming urge to be near her, to just sit by her and listen to all the wisdom she had to impart. Most recently, after I finally gave into motherhood, she would say, “Now you see what life is all about.” And she would laugh and say about Ayden, “Soon he’ll be grabbing his coat and going out the door when you go.”
As a centenarian, Manita lived through 17 presidents, and voted in every election including America’s first black president. She also outlived all her siblings (two sisters and three brothers), seven of her children, including her youngest daughter (my aunt to whom this is dedicated), and her husband. Manita was often asked her secret to her longevity and her replies would center on a prayer relationship with God, at least eight glasses of water a day, and treating people right. I live every day of my life recounting all the gemstones of wisdom she shared with me and others. My only wish is to be able to accomplish even a small portion of what she achieved.
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