Mam-maw

I spent most of last week telling stories about my paternal grandfather, so I would like to devote today’s post to my dad’s mother.

Mam-maw was quiet, kind and hard-working, and just being married to Pop for all those years qualified her for sainthood.  She raised three children of her own during the difficult times of the Great Depression, and she played a major role in the early years of my cousin Shirley.

She had a remarkable gift for getting you to be on your best behavior without ever raising her voice.  She always called me Bobby, but if she ever called me Bobby Allen, I knew that I had reached the end of my tether and I’d better back off.  I did, of course, immediately.  I would’ve rather walk through fire than disappoint her.

She made dance costumes for Shirley’s first ballet recital, and soon (and for years thereafter) she was making dozens of costumes for the dancers from the prestigious Hallie Pritchard School of Dance.  Most of the girls on the stage at the Music Hall during their annual recital were wearing costumes she created.  She sewed them all on an old treadle Singer, then added all the beads, bows and sequins by hand. 

I remember a day when I was twenty and I was helping my grandparents weed their vegetable garden.  Mam-maw seemed to be moving awfully slow, and her hoe hardly seemed to move at all.  When Pop and I stopped for a drink of water after about an hour of chopping weeds in the hot sun, she just kept on going.  At the end of the day, she had cleared almost half again as many rows as Pop and I together.

If she was ever sick, I never knew about it – I certainly never heard her complain about her health, not even a headache. 

When Pop died, things changed in a hurry.  Within a few short weeks of his death, a mole on her forehead – one that had been there all of my life - became cancerous and metastasized.  She went to join my grandfather within days of the diagnosis.  I was in a six-week school at 3M headquarters in Minnesota at the time, and she was gone before I knew anything was wrong.