I've not heard, yet, whether the editors will accept my article. Fingers crossed! Even if they don't, I'm glad to have written it. It is a beautiful story about my mother's childhood growing up in utter poverty on a small family farm in Southern Illinois. My mother was able to find the extraordinary within her ordinary life; she could see the beauty in imperfection, and she definitely found magic in the everyday. I hope you will enjoy reading "Stories to Enchant."
Stories to
Enchant
By Jamie Scism-Bacon
Quotes by Nancy Scism
Quotes by Nancy Scism
My mother grew up without the things
of luxury that bring hygge to my life.
Little things like … an indoor bathroom.
It wasn’t that conveniences such as plumbing, electricity, and indoor
bathrooms weren’t common during her childhood, it was that Mom grew up on a
small farm in rural southern Illinois with three siblings and hardworking, but
extremely poor, parents.
I loved listening to Mom’s childhood
stories while I was growing up. They
sounded so fantastic, almost magical because of how different her life had been
compared to my own. But now that I’m
grown, I can better appreciate the bitter hardship she not only endured as a
child, but succeeded in finding joy and beauty within.
One of my favorite stories was about
how she and her family took their weekly baths.
They did not have the extravagance of a shower, much less a large
jacuzzi style tub for enjoying a decadent bubble bath.
“We started out with a round aluminum galvanized metal tub.
And I was the only one that could really sit with their legs in the tub. Everybody else had to just set their bottom
in and let their legs hang out and bathe one part at a time.
Whoever was cleanest would bathe first and usually that was
me, so I’d be lucky! So, that person
would bathe and get out and the next person would get in. If the old bathwater started to get too cold,
we would just add hot water to it. After
the last person bathed, a couple of buckets would be dipped out and then two
people would carry the tub outside and dump it.
When I was in about seventh grade, we got really advanced –
we got an oblong bath tub that you could actually sit down in and straighten
your legs out. We still had to carry
water in buckets to the tub, but by the time we got that tub, we had a hot
water heater, so we no longer had to heat the water on the stove. We could actually run water from the kitchen
faucet into the bucket and take it to the tub. In the summertime, we set the tub out on the
back porch in the sunshine and let the sun warm up the water. Then you could bathe outside! Mary [her older sister] and I were pretty
modest, so Mother hung a curtain between the wall of the porch and our stack of
firewood, so we could bathe behind that.
Our kitchen sink was where you washed up for a meal, got ready
for school, brushed your teeth or washed your face. You didn’t wash your hair in the bathtub, you
washed your hair in the kitchen sink.
You just bent over and put your head under the faucet and washed it that
way.”
Now, thanks
to the knowledge of what my mom went through, every time I step into a hot
shower, my soul thanks God for hot running water at my fingertips – such
lavishness that so many of us take for granted.
Besides an
indoor bathroom, Mom’s family also longed for space in which to sleep and
live. Before her younger brother was
born, Mom shared one tiny bedroom with her older sister and brother.
“The width of the bedroom was the length of a bed with about
a foot at the end of it. Jim [her older
brother] had his bed across the end of that bedroom and Mary and I slept
together in the other bed, which we turned lengthwise in the room. We didn’t have a closet, so Daddy put a pipe across
the corner of the bedroom for the three of us to hang our clothes on. And, we didn’t have any dresser, we just kept
our clothes in a box under the bed.
Later, I had a suitcase I kept my clothes in. The very first dresser I ever owned was the
one I got when I got married. And, oh my
gosh, I just felt so wealthy!”
I look now
at my huge house that is so big I can’t keep it clean on my own – I have to hire
a cleaning service to help me keep it under control. I am so blessed with abundance!
Another of Mom’s
magical stories was about milking the cows.
I don’t know if magical is the right word. Perhaps “fantastic” is a better word, in the
true sense of it seeming like a fantasy, something unreal to me in my own
world.
“We had to milk the cows twice a day. So, we would get up at five o’clock in the
morning and begin. The cows would be
standing at the gate and they would know which cow was to go in first and they
knew which stall, or stanchion, was the one that they were supposed to go
into. So, they’d go put their head in,
looking forward to eating. Then we would
slide a board across, up by their neck and fasten them there while they
ate. We would usually turn in three at a
time, depending on who all was milking.
Often, I had other jobs as well as the milking because I
couldn’t milk more than about one cow in one sitting. One of my jobs, especially in the evening
milking, was the task of holding the cow’s tail, so she wouldn’t swat at the
flies and hit Mother in the face with her tail.
That tail hair really hurts if it’s swatted against you, especially in
your face. I was also assigned the job
of grabbing the shovel, if necessary, and holding it under the cow’s
backend. And so, whichever it was, I
held the shovel - and if I got splattered a little bit, well, that was better
than Mother getting it all over her.
After we got a larger herd of about twenty cows, Daddy got a
milking machine and we would put that on the cow that was the hardest to
milk. They were all different - and the
thing that made them difficult or easy to milk was the way their udders were
made. The hardest one to milk was old
Buttercup. She had really large teats,
so Daddy usually milked her, because it made your hands so sore - you had to
have really strong hands to milk her.
Most of our cows were very good natured. Usually, the only reason a cow would kick was
if it had a sore place on its udder and you accidentally got on it, or if the
flies were biting. But, we had one cow
that was kind of excitable – old Red.
She would kick. So, we had ‘kickers’
we would put on her. The old-fashioned kickers
hooked over the part of the cow’s hind leg that sticks out. You’d hook that over each leg and then pull a
chain to link those together. You’d pull
the chain up tight, so then the cow would not be able to lift her foot. But, old Red was able to kick so hard, she
would loosen those and then, man, you might get kicked! So, Daddy bought a pair of more modern
kickers, which were a big contraption that fit down over the cow’s back like a
wish bone. The prongs of the wishbone
would rest right in front of the cow’s hip bones, so if she tried to lift her
leg, she couldn’t. Well, old Red
discovered that she could buck with those on, so she did!”
When I buy
my milk in plastic jugs from the supermarket, the nitty gritty biology of
everything that goes on behind the scenes never occurs to me. No mess.
No dirt. No grime. All is sterile and in a grab-and-go
atmosphere. I laugh at myself as I think
of my habit of washing my hands when I get home from grocery shopping in an
attempt to avoid other people’s germs.
And, not once do I think about the possibility of being physically hurt
while grabbing my gallon of milk!
One of
Mom’s stories that always made my heart swell with tenderness and joy was her description
of calving season. It is obvious to me
that I come by my love for animals through her.
“Calving season was a wonderful time. I remember I got to see old Red give birth to
her calf. We would keep the cows in a
pasture closer to the barn when they were about ready to calve. Old Buttercup had twin calves one time. We had a big stall inside the barn, where we
would keep the calf for a few days after it was born. The best smell you’ve ever experienced was when
there was a newborn calf and it was all silky and sweet and cuddly – it smells
even better than a puppy. I would
snuggle up with them and lay down with them in the straw. It was pretty neat. And then, when they got bigger, we’d let them
be out with their mom a little while. But,
we needed to wean them pretty quickly to a bucket because we needed to sell the
milk. So, we would wean the calf away
from its mother and it was my job to feed the calf and get it started drinking
out of a bucket. I’d mix up this
powdered substance with water. It was
supposed to have the nutritional value of the cow’s milk. Then, I’d have to put my hand down in the
bucket, with my fingers pointing up and let the calf suck on my fingers to get
it started to drink out of the bucket. Once
it was able to suck on my fingers, I’d slip my fingers out of its mouth and
then it learned how to drink out of the bucket.
They had teeth, but it didn’t hurt, because they weren’t trying to chew,
they were trying to suck.”
I marveled at
Mom’s accounts of chores she had to do on the farm. While my childhood chores involved dusting
our household furniture and vacuuming our carpets, Mom’s were directly related
to contributing to the family’s income.
“When we first had cows, we sold cream, so it was my job to
separate the cream from the milk. When
we brought the milk into the house, it had to be strained into this ‘separator’. The can itself was metal and it was about
three feet tall and had a little window on the front and then a funnel shaped
bottom, which also had a little window in it.
So, whoever milked would pour the milk into the top of the separator and
strain it. Then, I would pour water into
that, so it would be half milk and half water and that would sit until the next
milking. Then I had to drain off that
watery milk down at the bottom. I’d
watch it in the window and whenever I could see that the cream was getting
close to the spigot, I’d turn it off. It
was my job to carry that milky water down to the hogs, which would usually take
a couple of trips. After I’d get the
milky water drained out from underneath the cream, I’d let the cream out into a
container. Then I had to wash the
separator and put a new straining pad in the strainer, so it would be ready for
the next milking. So, that was done
twice a day. We would save the cream in
the refrigerator until we had the cream can full and then we’d take that over
to the store and sell it.
One of the jobs I liked to do, especially because it was an
inside chore, was making the butter. We
made our own butter from the cream we got.
I just had to turn the handle on the churn until it became butter and
then Mother would drain the liquid off that and then wash the butter. To wash it, she would put it in a crock and
run cold water over it and squeeze the water through the butter. She just used her hands to work it and work
it and then kept pouring that water off until all of the butter milk was out of
the butter. After that, she salted it
and worked the salt into it and shaped it into loaves or a pat about the size
of a pie crust. And, oh, that fresh
butter was really good.”
I imagine
the day is coming, or perhaps is already here, when most people do not know how
to make their own cottage cheese. I
certainly did not. Mine comes in a
plastic container. But, my mom’s
description of making cottage cheese sounds so fun to me! I want to try it!
“This wasn’t one of my chores, but I liked to watch Mother make
cottage cheese. She would let a crock of
milk sit out on the counter in the kitchen at room temperature until it
clabbered. Then she would cut through it
with a knife, sort of like making a checker board. She would cook that on the stove and the little
checker board pieces would become the cheese curds. After that, she strained it, and the liquid
that was left over, which was called the whey, would just be fed to the hogs. Then she put the curds in a pillow case or a
feed sack and hung it out on the clothes line for it to finish dripping. Once all the liquid dripped out, she would bring
the bag into the house, put the curds into a big bowl, salt them, pour cream
over them, and stir it up and that was our cottage cheese.”
Though her
daily life was demanding, there were moments in each day that brought comfort.
“In the mornings, when we would come in from our morning
chores, Mother would always be cooking breakfast. Every morning we would have bacon and eggs
and toast and then some cooked cereal, either cream of wheat or oatmeal, and
some juice or canned fruit. So, it was
nice to come in and smell all of that being cooked.
Also, our bedtime ritual was something that always made me
feel cozy. We’d get our pajamas on and
brush our teeth and get in bed. Then we’d
call to Mother and say, “Mom, I’m ready to be tucked in.” And Mother would come and literally tuck us
in with the blanket up around us and, oh, that was just really great – it was
so comforting and made me feel secure. One
time during a cold winter, Mother heated a brick on top of the cook stove and
wrapped it in a towel and put it in our bed.
Oh, that was wonderful. But, that
was not a nightly occurrence, it was just a special treat.”
When I
think of a special treat, I think of key lime pie or going to a movie, but as a
child, Mom considered some of the simplest things treats and any free time at
all was a delight.
“When I was pretty little, one of my favorite things was when
the ice man would come. We had
electricity, but we didn’t have a refrigerator – we had an ice box. Mother would put a card in the window with a
number on it to tell the man how many pounds of ice she wanted. When he would bring the ice, he would just
have a canvas thrown over his big blocks of ice in the back of his truck and
then he’d take an ice pick and chop it apart, depending on the size Mom
wanted. Then, Jim and I would run out
and get on the back of the truck and pick up the pieces of ice and eat ‘em! Isn’t that crazy? But that just seemed like the best thing in
the world to us!
If I had free time, I loved to climb up in a tree and read. My favorite tree for reading in was our big
maple out front, because some of its limbs were arranged so that there were two
parallel limbs I could sit on and then lean back against the third one. So, I would climb that tree with my book and
read up there. That was so wonderful –
it was just like a heavenly place for me.
Another special treat was when I got to play in my play
house. I didn’t have an actual house, it
was an area behind our smoke house. I
marked it off with bean poles – those were my pretend walls. I had an old stove, sort of like a camp
stove, that Mother didn’t want anymore.
Oh, that was so great that I could pretend to be cooking. My cabinets were orange crates that were
turned up on end and my table was two orange crates put together. I had a table cloth that was actually an old
head scarf. I would make mud pies and
then cut them and serve them to pretend guests.
Sometimes Mother would go out there and sit on a log or something and
she would be my guest. Mother would
occasionally give me something like some old cocoa that she didn’t like or her
empty spice bottles and then I’d fill the spice bottles with water – just silly
stuff like that.”
Like most
children, Christmas was a magical time for Mom.
What I find remarkable, though, is how little it took to thrill her. I’ve witnessed my own child and my nieces and
nephews so inundated with presents at Christmas that they went from one present
to the next, unwrapping each and tossing the gift aside to unwrap the next. Sometimes I’ve even felt guilty about what
appeared to be gluttonous behavior on their parts – caused, of course, by our
own overindulgence of them. By
comparison, my mom’s magical Christmas mornings, were of the simplest means.
“Some of my favorite memories were about Christmas
morning. It was just magical. We would have our stockings, but almost as
exciting as the stocking, was the stuff that Santa would leave under the
tree. There would be an opened bag of
horehound candy, one of mixed nuts, and a coconut and sometimes a
pomegranate. We didn’t have those things
on a regular basis, so that was really special.
In our stockings we’d have an orange and an apple, and usually some nuts
and then one toy or gift. One year there
was a doll dress that Mary had made. At
the time, I didn’t know that Mary had made it, of course, but that was really
special. And then, Mother would fix a
big Christmas dinner. So, I’d be
smelling that and looking at all the stuff that Santa had left, and it all just
seemed enchanting.”
Enchanting,
indeed. My mom made my own life
enchanting by instilling in me the ability to see the wonder of nature, to feel
the magic of simple moments, and to cherish the love of family. For those treasures, I will always feel
wealthy.
Jamie
Scism-Bacon, PhD, is a scientist and writer who loves nature, animals, and
being creative. When she’s not writing,
she can be found out in the woods with her camera or crocheting in her favorite
chair. You can follow her latest
adventures at https://asnailsspace.blogspot.com/.
No comments:
Post a Comment