Consider the Southern woman for just a moment.
I am not talking about your run of the mill woman here, but the real, true, honest to God Southern woman.
I capitalize the word “Southern” , as it is truly one of the properist of nouns. If you are shaking your head and proclaiming that “properist” is not a word, then read no further, because explaining Southern women will not help you one bit.
You see, a woman born here in the South, raised by tough, hard working parents, most likely went to a county school here, and married and birthed babies here….well, she’s just gonna be a certain kind of woman and that is the truth, I swear up and down.
These types of women have their ways.
You may never be able to understand her unless you are one of them, but you have to admire her.
CC BY 2.0/ Windell Oskay
She will punish a kid, then hug him to her chest and give him a Tootsie Roll.
She will brag on her kid’s teacher, take her a little gift now and then, but she will cuss that same teacher like a sailor if they do one little thing wrong concerning their kid.
She will sit on the ground in the park , eating a bologna and cheese sandwich, with her flip flops kicked off, her skin burning in the sun, wearing a cap, a tank top and a pair of cut off jeans, while other, more fancy women, sit in a pretty chair, fanning herself with a little fan, sheltered by an umbrella to keep the sun off of her delicate skin.
(This, also is a type of Southern woman, but she is not the type we are discussing. She is more the Scarlett O’Hara type, and maybe I will touch on that subject at another time.)
The Southern woman we ARE discussing will yell at the umpire at her kid’s baseball games, tell him in no uncertain terms that he is blind, crippled and crazy and needs to go to umpire school, then go to the concession stand and get him a Coke if he looks like he needs one.
She will spend sixty dollars on a fishing rod, then buy Sam’s colas because they are cheap. She will buy her husband a sixty dollar shirt and just wear his old tee shirts, not because she has to, but because they are comfy and maybe smell like him.
She will wear jeans to the funeral home, and go to Walmart wearing the grass covered
pajama pants she was weed eating in an hour before. There will be pieces of grass trapped in her tennis shoes, but she either doesn’t notice or doesn’t care.
She WILL look like a million bucks when she dresses up to go to church or out to eat, then look like a bad nickel when she is at home, alone…..and she likes it that way.
When someone says, “You look beautiful in that outfit” she will say, “Oh, this old thing has been in my closet for two years. I feel fat in it.” Then, she will whisper in her husband’s ear, “Did you hear that? They said I look beautiful.”
(If her husband is any kind of man he will say, “And you DO look beautiful, Honey.”)
She will call her parents nearly every day, and then tell everyone how her parents get on her last nerve. In spite of this, she will pray for them every night, and never tell them she does it. But, she knows they know…
She will meet the school bus to give the driver a bag of pecans she picked up off the ground. She will bake a sweet potato, wrap it in foil and put it in the mailbox for the mailman.
She will tap a complete stranger on the shoulder at the Dollar General and say, “Honey, I am turning in the tag on the back of your shirt. I know you would do it for me.” Then, she will adjust the tag where it doesn’t show, and if that stranger doesn’t have change to pay for her Pepsi, she will toss them a few coins.
She will also say that everyone needs to take care of themselves. This is while she is spending time taking care of people!!
She will pick up a stranger’s kid and hug him. She will threaten her own kids with every Southern torture known to man, then brag on them to everyone else.
She will let the family dog take a bite of her ice cream cone, but she won’t let her kids drink after each other from a bottle of water.
She will smile sweetly at the cop who stops her for “going just a tad too fast”, saying, “good morning, officer!” Then when he really does give her a ticket, she will say to him, “All you cops are this way…..that’s why the world is in such a bad shape! Thanks for nothing, Buster, and I will see your ass in court!!”
She will cringe and go “ewwwwww” just to get her man to bait her hook, but when he’s not around, she will go fishing alone, catch a stringer of catfish, and have them cleaned and cooked when he gets home from work. WITH hush puppies and slaw!
She will take and make phone calls, watch the kids, and have laundry going while she works in the yard out in the hot sun, sweating, getting miserably dirty and tired. She will then go into the kitchen and cook cornbread, beans, okra, potatoes, slaw, fried chicken and a peach cobbler like it’s nothing. When someone asks what she did all day she will say, “Ah, nothing, really, just hung around the house.”
By now, you probably see your mother, your grandmother, or even yourself in this little story.
Times are changing fast, and the true Southern woman may be disappearing. I hope not. They are worth their weight in gold, and while they don’t usually brag, they know it.
I grew up watching my grandmothers, mother, aunts, and their friends be this kind of woman. Even then, as a child, I marveled at their capabilities and their way of making something out of nothing. (These women can open a refrigerator, find nothing inside it, and somehow still somehow make a four course meal.)
I remember seeing my MawMaw Hill wearing her brown bonnet, hoeing the weeds from her precious zinnia bed, while she had beans on the stove and a cake in the oven. I have the bonnet, and once in a while I try it on, just because I can.
I remember seeing my Momma on her knees beside a flower bed or a row of beans, deciding out loud what to cook for supper and planning on mowing the yard before she cooked it.
I remember my Aunt Shelby working all day in fields of pepper and tomatoes, then going home and making a big supper for all of us kids, while we sat and watched television.
The strength these kind of women have!!
You can still see this in some of them if you just watch. She will be wearing sweats or jeans in the grocery store, her hair will be a little messy, she will have a kid in the grocery cart and one by the hand, and they will be behaving.
She will look a little harried and rushed, but she will still pick through those tomatoes and onions like she is buying gold. She may be eating crackers as she walks down aisle five because she fed the kids but not herself.
She gets her hair cut twice a year, does her own nails and uses store brand personal items so her kids can have Nikes and Under Armor. She drives a ten year old car, and puts hundreds of miles on it every week while seeing to the needs of her elderly parents and her kids.
I guess the point to all this is that this kind of woman may become extinct. She may be going away.
I have a theory about this….I believe the basics of life are being put to the side. I believe the world of technology and superficiality is taking over. I believe the generations of women to come may be getting weaker in the sense of being a true Southern woman.
I believe women such as our grandmothers, aunts, mothers, and some of us, may one day no longer exist.
It is , I guess, our responsibility to see that they stick around. We need their strength and determination. We need to know how to use a cast iron skillet and wield a hoe in a pea patch.
I hope I can hold out to become half the woman they were and are. I can aspire to it, even if I can’t do it.
So, let’s put supper on, get a glass of tea, take the dog for a walk, check on the laundry, clean the McDonalds wrappers out of the car, sweep off the front porch, fold some clothes, eat a moon pie, wipe a kid’s dirty face, talk to our family on the phone, bathe the dog, and look through the mail to see if we got any graduation announcements.
It’s all in a day for a true Southern woman!!
Later on, when everyone else is sleeping, we can stay up late, relax in a bubble bath, eat Cheerios while we watch a chick flick, and drink a little glass of something.
No one else need ever know that we are taking some time for ourselves. They don’t necessarily have to see us being human….they need to be thinking we are Southern Superwomen……………AND, WE ARE!!!!!
