Strawberry Preserves and Ripped Seams

Every morning, the smell of sugar rice and biscuits would invade our four-room palace on Gaither Avenue. At barely 6AM, my Mamaw would shuffle through the kitchen adding cups of sugar to white rice on the stove as the smell roused my sister and I from our room adjacent to the kitchen. We would pad into the kitchen and curl up on the couch waiting anxiously for breakfast but knowing better than to confess our impatience with inquiry. Every morning, Mamaw’s sugar rice served as our alarm clock, and every evening her rambling prayers lulled us to sleep. I swear she prayed for every living creature within a fifty-mile radius, and somehow they were all our relatives. 

Magic consumed my childhood. I was privileged by the innocence that my Mamaw secured, kindled, and protected. Growing up, I spent every summer with my Mamaw in Newton, North Carolina. Holidays, special occasions, and every weekend that my mother could afford, we spent with Mamaw. When we lost our home in Alabama, there was Mamaw. My mom arrived beneath the familiar aluminum carport way past our bedtime. Mamaw pulled out the bell jars and fresh strawberries. We stayed up past midnight, learning to make strawberry preserves, as my mom and Mamaw carried on one of their silent conversations. My Mamaw never slept in a bed after my Papaw passed away; she claimed the couch was suddenly much more comfortable. That night, she lingered in the bed after prayers. My sister slept with my mom, and Mamaw stayed beside me.

Through high school, college, and my first year of graduate school, my Mamaw was the constant. With a squeeze of her hand and a look from those piercing blue eyes, my Mamaw could mine her way into the soul without ever speaking a word.   

Wednesday evening curled up in the corner of the couch, I sat down to write a reflection on my student teaching, and suddenly I was staring at a three-page story about the woman who raised me, the woman who was not done raising me when she passed away last year. I tried to delete what I had written, but I could not bring myself to erase everything. In truth, my Mamaw was my greatest teacher. She did not finish high school, but she knew how to make a single box of instant mashed potatoes last for a week. She knew exactly what to say to our neighbor, Elaine, when her son passed away. She knew how to get me out of the white oak tree beside the house when I climbed too high. She taught me how to make strawberry preserves in life’s stickiest situations. She taught me that sometimes you don’t need words, sometimes the only thing that a child needs is someone to stay silently beside them in the midst of the 'muck and mire' of life.

In my search for what I wanted, I ran in circles back to Newton, North Carolina. It took me years of searching, to rediscover what I knew as a child. My Mamaw is all that I have ever wanted to become.  Twelve months ago, I made my final midnight trip down to see her. I crawled into the bed beside her at the nursing facility; I stayed beside her in the darkened room, staring at the creases in her brow that I had never noticed before.  I waited for her to rouse and prayed and waited for time to turn back. Sometimes, I think I’m still waiting.

Until I see her again, I hold on to my memories and her recipe for strawberry preserves, in hopes that her precious memory will not be lost on my students, in hopes that they will see that tapes and twigs are only temporary, in hopes that my teaching reaches beyond the audible dialogue and into the muck and mire.