Grandma, Me, and Jesus in 3-D

Sallman's Head of Christ

Grandma lived about three hours away from us, back in the days before interstates could whisk us wherever we needed to go. The three-hour drive consisted of maneuvering over two-lane country roads, so our visits were mostly limited to special occasions like Christmas and Mother's Day. 

One of those special occasions was the first two weeks of June when my parents would deposit me at Grandma's for a vacation. I was never quite sure whose vacation it was supposed to be, but it must have been mine, because during those two weeks, I attended VACATION Bible School at Grandma's church. 

In the 1950's, Bible School wasn't the creative, fun learning environment it is today. Discipline was the rule, and spending half a day for two weeks sitting on thickly varnished wooden chairs (that tended to get tacky with summer's high humidity) didn't seem like much of a vacation to me. 

The Sewing Machine

On a recent afternoon, I opened up my sewing machine to repair my husband’s jeans. I noticed immediately that the stitching didn’t look right. Pulling out my well-worn instruction manual for the Model 1351 Zigzag Sewing Machine, I flipped through the pages to find the trouble-shooting guide. There, on the memo page, were the measurements of my daughters, my son, my sister, and me. The writing is the recognizable script of my mother, recording our sizes as they were the last time she held this manual in her hands in 1980.

Like a freeze-frame from a movie, I remembered the sight of my mother hunched low over her sewing machine as she deftly maneuvering fabrics under the needle, generating clothing for my sister and me.

For all of my childhood, my mother owned a sewing machine. Her first was a Christmas present from my dad. Purchased in the 1950’s, it was made of steel and finished in bright blue with chrome trim. It folded down neatly into a mahogany cabinet with Chippendale-style pull on the front door. Since our ranch-style home had no rooms to spare for only sewing, her sewing machine substituted as decorative surface in our living room usually with a lamp or flower arrangement of seasonal kind on top of its closed lid. 

I don’t recall Mom ever telling me who taught her to sew. Her mother died when she was very young. Her father abandoned her and her two younger brothers. Their grandmother raised them. Mom grew up industrial strength. As poor farmers deep in the south, they struggled for day to day existence. Perhaps my great-grandmother shared her skills with her skinny little granddaughter. I am confident my mother learned more from necessity than for the sake of a hobby.

Love Is Like a See-Saw

I saw this “cartoon” on Facebook recently. I don’t know where it originally came from, so I can’t give proper credit to the humorist who developed it, but it reminded me of something that happened about 25 years ago. 

My husband and I had just married about two years before this occasion. I certainly didn’t consider myself a newlywed because I’d weathered marital difficulties previously in what I call “my former life,” but it was in something I will never forget.

I worked for a small family-run business. It reminded me of the Ewing family from the old Dallas series. The patriarch had passed away, leaving the matriarch to preside over her three squabbling sons who consistently jockeyed for priority, attention, and authority within the business. Only three of us in the office were not related to the family: the accountant, the receptionist, and me. At least that was the situation at the beginning of this story.

The receptionist was a gorgeous red-haired young woman. I’ll call her Diana (names have been changed to protect the innocent). She was a living doll, but unfortunately not one of the brightest bulbs in the box, as some people say. I quietly marveled each day that she managed to accomplish the simplest tasks. Nevertheless, she was beautiful! That beauty caught the eye of most men who came to the office, but particularly one of the grandsons, heretofore referred to us Rob. He immediately began pursuit. 

It didn’t take much to woo her. He was rich. She was not. She dazzled with her beauty, he dazzled with his wealth. It wasn’t long until they were married. Unlike most newlyweds of the era, they were immediately able to move into a big farmhouse purchased by the family for the freshly-minted couple.

Over lunch on the first day of Diana’s return to work after the honeymoon, she shared with me that the evening before she had prepared everything for Rob’s morning. She pressed his shirt, set out his shoes with appropriately coordinating socks tucked into them, and laid out his wardrobe for the day. She was up at dawn, dressed, and put on full make-up and hair for herself. In his bathroom, she set his toiletries out, conveniently arranged for his convenience, including the dispensing of the appropriate dollop of toothpaste on his toothbrush (lest he have to do it for himself). Then she went downstairs and prepared a massive breakfast for him.