From One Lady to Another……

I stood over this one and thought, “The later they come, the better looking they get!” I didn’t mind the wrinkles or the red face. And it didn’t bother me that she never opened her eyes. She was the fifth. I was getting to be an old hand at standing over brand spanking new grandbabies.

Avery Lee Colbert is going to be a little different from the others. And very, very special….. Oh, she doesn’t realize it yet. And some have even kidded me gently about another granddaughter. She was the fourth girl. She couldn’t have possibly been anything else. 

She was born April the 8th. My Mother turned 90 in the same month. It will be her last birthday on this earth. The years have caught up with her. This once vibrant lady who could “put her shoulder to the plow” or “gently brush away a tear” with equal aplomb has entered her final mile. I don’t know how God works. It is way beyond my finite mind to comprehend. But I know this to be the infallible, unerring, absolute truth of all truths—God somehow has heard my groan. Even as I struggle with the inevitable, as I prepare for the unpreparable, God has sent me a replacement!

I have one coming and one going. Life is precious at both ends.

And listen, this is not a sad story. Many daughters have done virtuously, but my Mother excellest them all! She opened her mouth with wisdom; and her tongue is the law of kindness. She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not of the bread of idleness. Her children arise up and call her blessed…… 

She didn’t run off and leave us when we were ten years old. She didn’t seek personal gratification, fame or wealth! She’d be picking those gravels out of my knee after a particular bad spill and the silent tears would be sliding down her face……for my pain! Leon rolled our ’51 Chevrolet over that embankment out on highway 22 and she didn’t judge, criticize or condemn. She thanked God he wasn’t killed and then sat up all night wiping the blood that kept oozing from the stitches Dr. Holmes had sewed around his eye. She never gave up on David Mark when he came home from Viet Nam a little on the wild side. I asked her years later how she didn’t go insane with some of our shenanigans. She quietly replied “I remembered the Word promises……‘and when they are old, they will not depart from it.’”

She stood by us through thick and thin. She loved us when we were sometimes hard to love. She’d put on a ball glove and play pitch with us when there was absolutely no one else. She’d get up anytime you’d say and fix a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And she forgave our transgressions way past that seventy times seven thing……

I can’t wait for Avery to get a few years on her. I’m going to take her back to the house where we grew up. I’m going to show her the big ditch where David fell through the ice. And I’m going to paint that picture for her of Mom, barefooted, racing down to us through the snow, swooping a frozen Dave up in her arms and out running the lot of us back to the house. I’m going to walk her up Stonewall Street toward town and when we get just to the hill by the Campbell house I’m going to turn her around and have her look back down the street. “When I was about your age, your great grandmother would still be standing out in the middle of the street, wearing that old red and white apron, watching to see if we were making it o. k.”

I’m going to read the silly poems out of the Childcraft books to Avery just like Mom read them to me. I’m going to tell her about those homemade biscuits from scratch and how Mom could wave her hand and make a full meal out of turnip greens and cornbread. Me and Avery are going to smell that vinegar at Easter. I’m going to teach her about hats in church, Buster Brown, throwing silver Christmas icicles up on the high branches, plundering in the attic……and a smile that never quit.

Just think of the blessing in store for the both of us! I’m going to make it a goal of my life to make sure Avery understands the gentleness, the wisdom, the inner strength and the abiding love that permeates a family in large degree because one lady set the example for us. We are “we” because of her! Now, there is a legacy that will endure through the ages! 

My prayer is that Avery comes to appreciate, is influenced by and reflects some of the qualities of her great grandmother. The timeliness of her birth is not accidental, happenstance, coincidental or a fluke of nature. She was heaven sent!

And it is important for both of us to understand as life unfolds before us, when the going gets tough, the path a little unclear, the decisions a mite complex ……all we have to do is glance back down to the end of Stonewall. There will be a dark haired, beautiful young lady in a red and white checked apron watching over us to see we are “making it o.k.”.…….

You talk about Blessed Assurance!

Respectfully,

K.K.