Maybe you think “I had a Momma, too..She’s not the only one who had and lost a Momma.”
If so, I understand.
The telling of my Momma stories is not only for me. I tell these stories to remind us all of a generation past and gone, a generation so different from how we are today.
They were strong, determined women who made it with very little technology and often, very little money.
I also tell the stories out of respect for the women of an era when many women in the deep south were not in charge of much. They may have tended the kids, the fields, the home front, and the stove, but we have to face the fact that just because mothers could vote and drive and go visiting didn’t mean they were free.
Most of them, as children,had survived the Great Depression, which drove some of their men folk to alcohol or even suicide, or just made them go away to do Lord knows what.
During their lives, things did improve for them, but I have often heard her speak wistfully of things she never did, or things promised and never fulfilled.
Sometimes I look at my life and the lives of my friends and I think “Wow, our mothers never got to __________”(fill in the blank according to what your Momma never got to do.)
My Momma didn’t have an easy life…she did have a very feisty and spirited mother of her own, who held things together in spite of an alcoholic husband. Very little money made it home. I suspect it went to bootleggers and gamblers, but I have little proof other than stories and tales..
Mothers such as mine told stories while she sprinkled clothes at the ironing board or peeled peaches and apples to lay on a white sheet in the sun to dry.
Mothers such as mine did without so we could come home to a new outfit sewn on a sewing machine while white beans cooked on the stove.
But, I digress……
Several days ago my sister and I flung open the door to what we call “Momma’s shop”. What it really was is a graveyard for things unwanted, unused, rarely used, things too ugly to use, or things that might sell in her yard as the sun rose and we all drank coffee and put up tables and signs.
This was sacred ground, you know. It belonged to Momma and she was the boss of it.
She told us what to put in there and where to put it, where it came from, what it cost, and what she was eventually going to do with it.
At times, she flung open the doors and sold only glassware to men and women who would hang around for hours, just so Momma could make them laugh or hand them a sack and order them to pick some turnip greens from the garden behind the shop.
Anyway, we stood in the door, then looked at each other in dismay. The place was packed practically to the ceiling with stuff. Now, I couldn’t say “stuff” when Momma was alive, because she was, in fact, a form of hoarder in that all this, to her, was treasure.
My sister and I started to dig, drag, trash, discuss, discard, lay aside, and divide what is left of our Momma’s life on this earth. Of course, we both realize this is just the material things….she left a much bigger legacy which is much more important than just her “stuff”.
“Oh!! Look!” We said several times, as we found cookbooks, pictures, quilt tops, dishes we had used as children, old toys, and some of the outfits she would order from a Blair catalogue after poring over the pages for hours.
“Momma wore this to a wedding!”
“Momma wore these shoes in the garden!”
“I’m taking this cotton scale and nobody better say a word about it!”
“I want this old sewing machine if you don’t want it.”
“Momma hated this with a passion!”
“Momma loved this hat!”
“Wonder why she didn’t go ahead and finish this quilt?”
“Oh, here’s her George Jones jacket!”
“Look at this tee shirt, it says “Money talks and O.J. walks!”
“Oh my Lord, it’s the whole Patsy Cline collection and it’s never been opened!!”
We put out Momma’s yard sale sign and put out some tables.
Eventually, even though we both realized we didn’t exactly put everything where Momma would, customers came around.
Many of them who didn’t know Momma had passed away asked if she was going to come out, of if I would go in and get her.
“Oh, I haven’t seen her in a long time! I just LOVE her!”
“She used to sell me pretty glassware for my store.”
“Lord, I have picked many a turnip green here. I miss her so much.”
“She always gave my kids toys for free.”
“Oh, she sure did love George Jones!”
“Does she still work in the yard? I haven’t seen her out here in a long time and I pass by twice a day.”
And on and on it went. A few times, these friends of our Momma would be downcast at the news of her passing, and we would shed a tear or two together.
We heard several stories of things she had said and done when they stopped by. Of course, we laughed too, because Momma was something of a clown.
As we wound down the yard sale and split the money we had made, the thought occurred to me that we could not have honored our personal yard sale queen, Momma, in any better way.
I decided to use my money to buy Momma some new flowers…She would have loved to see us sitting in her yard, cleaning out her shop, selling things, laughing, talking, occasionally crying, drinking coffee, fussing, and talking to people who miss her so much.
I hope someday my kids honor me with stories. I hope they tell about my broken arm, my pitiful attempts at becoming a cowgirl, my cabinets full of crafting stuff, my stuffed to the gills costume closet, my hundreds of purses and shoes.
I hope they remember that, in my sixties, I wore a green wig and rode on parade floats, that I leapt off the pier with the kids, 
pushed a lawnmower, went fishing, outfitted them for Halloween, rode a bicycle, and occasionally swilled a beer, or even two.
I hope they remember the hissy fits I threw and the times I hugged them or nagged them into submission.
I haven’t had the most fun life, and neither did our Momma. We just do what we have to do and have a laugh while we do it. There finally came the time I heard her whisper on the phone to a friend “Yes, it’s cancer”.
Even as I stood in her kitchen with my heart breaking into pieces, I knew we could still find a memory or something to laugh about.
Yeah, Mothers are treasures. Sometimes we don’t know it until we don’t have that treasure anymore.
If you have one, go hug your Momma…you know you want to. And she wants you to, too……it’s the very best thing a child can do…hug their mother. No matter how old you are.
