Hearing the Family Stories
Yesterday I showed you some of God’s wonders that I’ve seen around our area this spring. I forgot to mention the most wonderful of the wonders that you and I enjoy—our children and, for many of us homeschool mama alumnae, our grandchildren. To know and love these precious creations made in the image of God is a privilege.
You have probably enjoyed, as I have, being in a group of women who are sharing birth stories. My Aunt Dot did that the other day when we visited her. I have often told the story of the night my brother was born. Daddy had taken me trick or treating at my Great-great Aunt Lizzie’s house. When we got back, Mother was ready to go to the hospital. My Aunt Dot added to my knowledge about that night. Aunt Dot was expecting her son Jim, who would be born a couple of months after my brother Steve. Aunt Dot, Uncle Preston, and Mother were all sitting at Mama Sue and Daddy Leland’s kitchen table that night. Aunt Dot said that Mother was quiet and calm, but that her mother-in-law Mama Sue knew that she was very much in labor. Mama Sue told her that she had better get to the hospital. When Daddy and I got back, they headed that way. It wasn’t long before Steve was born.
This picture wasn’t taken that night,
but it does show Mother
sitting at a kitchen table in the 1950s.
My brother Steve when he was a baby
When I asked Aunt Dot where she was born, she giggled her special giggle and said in that distinctive voice that I love, “In the woods.” She giggled some more and told about the tiny house Mama Sue, Daddy Leland, and my then-four-year-old Daddy were living in then. A doctor and a midwife attended Mama Sue at the birth. Mama Sue said that the midwife made her a bowl of oatmeal and that it was the best she ever tasted.
Aunt Dot when she was a little girl
How sweet to imagine Mother sitting at the table, being quiet and calm, and hearing her mother-in-law give her timely advice which I’m sure she was thankful she took. It was sweet, too, to sit with my almost-90-year old Aunt Dot and think about the day she was born.
Several years ago, I had a surprising opportunity to hear a family birth story. Ray, Mother, and I were at the 90th birthday celebration for John Russell Peck, one of Mother’s first cousins.
My mother, her cousin John Russell, his wife Avanell, and me, February 2014
To my great surprise, John Russell told me: “I remember the day your mother was born.” Mother was in her early 80s at the time, so there weren’t many people alive who could say that!
John Russell was eight years old on March 13, 1932. It was a Sunday. Female relatives were inside his maternal grandparents’ house, while John Russell and the men of the family waited outside. John Russell’s grandmother, Ollie Elliott, was a midwife. Inside the house, she attended her eldest daughter, Lorene Elliott Farmer, (John Russell’s Aunt Lorene) while she gave birth to her firstborns, twin girls. One of those twins was my mother.
Mother when she was a girl
Family stories have many benefits. They give us an opportunity to honor the storyteller. They enlighten us about our heritage. They help us know who we are and who the storyteller is. Sometimes they warn us of dangers to avoid. Sometimes they tell us of heroes we want to emulate.
A wise man will hear and increase in learning,
And a man of understanding will acquire wise counsel . . .
Proverbs 1:5