I've been posting directly to Facebook not for over a year, all rants and raves and thoughts on the natural processes of the world, and some not so natural. I decided to take a look at some of my older musings and realized that I hadn't done a blog post for over a year.
A solid year.
It boggles my mind. I write so many posts, some cathartic and some based on random thoughts, that I was a bit thrown off kilter that I hadn't posted here in so long.
I guess that's how life works sometimes. You share and share and share, throwing bits of flotsam into the Universe, that when you stop, it's like the earth slows down to a crawl and you lose actual time itself. At least for me, that's how it feels. Blogs are not as fashionable as they used to be, it's more of a YouTube internet right now, with short snippets of influential goings-on. I will admit, it's one of my favorite pastimes of late, and I watch a lot of the darned things, mostly dogs and gorillas. I have no clue as to why.
This morning, my thoughts crept out of my brain somewhat slower than usual and I was remembering our childhood housekeeper, Willie Mae. This was the 1960s, and we called her our maid. Both Mom and Dad worked full-time, and I needed looking after, and that's just what people did back then. She lived with us part-time, because it was easier and more comfortable for her, because she was already ancient when she showed up like an unleashed Rottweiler, ready to take on demons to keep my little sister and I safe.
Willie Mae was a force of nature, to use an old cliche. She came to us by some invisible ether, suddenly showing up to iron everything, literally, and to bake us pound cake that has never been equaled to this day. She was stern and you did not cross this woman or all hell would be released. She was there in the morning at some point ( I was already on the school bus) and when I got home, she was there, waiting at the front door like an ominous presence that may or may not have needed an exorcism. Early days with Willie Mae were rough. I was not used to toeing the line, shall we say, but this woman knew how to use a wooden spoon. She had raised her own children, and now she was raising us.
Over the next eight years or so, Willie Mae became such an engrained member of our family that she sat at our kitchen table and ate with us, carrying on in all of the conversations, just like an old family matriarch would do. She slept over some nights, when the day had been too long for her, and going back to her own home, deep in the wilds of Silver Springs, with no running water or electricity, was an inconvenience. She never worked weekends, Dad always diligently gave her a ride home on Friday afternoons. Her stories were fascinating to me, and I have always loved story-tellers. I cannot tell you how old she actually was, but she had stories of what she called the Old South. She told me about hunting for crawfish in little "cricks," how dancing under moonlight would make you crazy and how washing up your hair with rainwater was just the best thing. She made us the most delicious sour orange pie I've ever eaten, and regularly schooled our parents on how to cook up collards, fry up shrimps and lay down biscuits and pie crust the "right" way. She taught me to iron, to do laundry (we used a washing machine, but she sometimes washed up dad's khaki shirts in a tub and used a scrubbing board) and hang it up on the line to dry. She sent me out to feed the chickens and collect the eggs, making sure I spread out some crushed oyster shell so the hen eggs wouldn't be so fragile. She tolerated our dog, but never let her in the house, because dogs didn't belong there. Try telling that to my current brood, who think everything in the house belongs to them.
A couple of things I do remember about Willie Mae the most was that she was a snuff-user. Not the "new" definition of snuff. Real tobacco snuff. She dip those horrible dried leaves in between her bottom lip and her jaw and spit vile juices of mixed saliva and tobacco in the sink, which was white ceramic. Thank goodness for Comet cleanser. Her snuff cans were lined up behind the partition between the cabinet doors above the stove hood, so that they would be out of sight. Willie Mae hated smoking, and Mom and Dad were both chain smokers, but dipping snuff was fine with her. I found those cans years after Willie Mae had left us and this world behind, and I wondered why Mom had never thrown them away.
I had tried smoking once. My friend up the road, Tina Evers, and I sneaked cigarettes into my room and we crawled into my closet to try and smoke one day after school.Now, Tina's parents smoked, in fact, everyone smoked back then, but Tina was as scared of her mother as I was of Willie Mae, so my house was the chosen haven for the cigarette trial. Willie Mae seemed quite busy ironing something or other, (I believe sheets) and watching television, so we thought we could hide in the closet and get away with it.
Our coughing, and the thin wisps of smoke coming out from under the door alerted her spider senses and she opened the door like the God of Thunder and started chastising us out with a vengeance. Tina ran out, dropping the cigarette, and running out the kitchen screen door to escape the fire-breathing monster that was Angry Willie Mae. She stepped on that cigarette with her house shoes within seconds, started out of the bedroom, grabbed her corn broom, and began to swat at me relentlessly, yelling at me the whole time about the devil and hell and how I had "better never do that again, you spoilt chile."
And I never did. To this day, I have never smoked a cigarette (of any kind) since.
I had so much respect for the woman. I respected her gruffness, respected her all-enveloping kindness and love, even though she tried to hide it, and respected her moral and ethical rules to live by. She shaped my upbringing as much as my own parents. She taught me respect for all living things, because everything had a purpose "from the ants to the eagles," and there was no difference in people, just skin color. I loved that woman, all of her.
Willie Mae died fairly soon after my little sister was born. She made an excellent wage as our housekeeper, with dad always being fair about paying for all the work she did for us, plus extra. She did not have health insurance, and it was not a requirement for employers to provide that at the time. She had been suffering for years with gall bladder attacks, and having myself suffer from that many moons later, I can not imagine the pain she hid from us. It finally sent her to the hospital, and she did not recover. I don't recall all the details, but I do know that her house and money (yes, kept in cans and buried under the front porch of her home) were all taken by her son, but Dad paid for her medical bills and her subsequent funeral and was happy to do so. I have no clue where Willie Mae is buried, do not know if she has a headstone, and still never knew her last name nor what happened to any of her collected treasures, mostly bird nests and foreign coins from far-off lands.
We got a new housekeeper, but she didn't work out. She was much younger, and had a massive afro, which she spent hours oiling and primping. She smoked cigarettes as much as my parents did, and always had one hanging out of her mouth while she was ironing and fixing after-school snacks. She watched a lot of television, curled up on the couch or on the telephone. We had one phone, a yellow wall model, with cord that was so stretched out, it made it into the living room. She was pretty much oblivious to my sister and I. When she was let go, it was up to me to govern myself after school, and my little sister was put into day-care for a little while. Those were the best years after Willie Mae, because I could run through the woods at will with my dog Sandy, which I thought was just a mutt until I found out she was, at least mostly, an English Cocker. I managed to get my homework and household chores done, still watch my beloved Dark Shadows on television before Mom got home.
Why she was in my thoughts this morning I haven't a clue. But, she was there, hands on her aproned hips, sluffing along in her well-worn house shoes, with her hair tied up in a bandana. As most things that touch my soul, I had to write a little missive about my memories of her and how she became so important and beloved to me. She is not, and never will be, forgotten.
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