january 8

today is mama's birthday.  91 years she has walked this planet. 16 of them as a young maiden living in a poverty stricken family during the great depression, although they never would have known it.  if it were not for the fact that when she went to school there were holes in her shoes, and she had only the one pair to last the whole year.  she has told me of various times when she was ashamed of the way she and her siblings had to dress, among other things.  shame has been a big shadow that has lurked in the background of her heart her whole life.  i catch a glimpse of it coming and going.  perhaps i am the only one who sees.  though there was nobility in certain branches of her ancestry, her father was a backwoodsman type.  a trapper. perhaps sharecropping at times. tho poverty inevitibly brings with it some sorrow, her family seemed like a fairly happy bunch.  they truly lived off the land, and moved several times in search of work.  i don't have many memories of interactions with either him or grandma very well, although mama says that when i was a baby he used to lay down on the bed to rest and i used to sit up near his head with a wet washrag mopping his brow. she said, oh how he loved that.  i wish i could remember such tender times.  grandpa and grandma lecoq died when i was 5 years old. he first, and not long afterward she followed. i remember bits and pieces.  not too much.  i do remember their place had chickens and pigs and a huge forest of fig trees we used to play among as kids.  and an outhouse...sears roebuck catalog and all.  i swear.  out among the fig trees.  fascinating little place, that outhouse. i remember visiting in the evenings and sitting on the front porch with our little kid-sized legs dangling from the edge while the grownups sat on the swing and in rockers. i remember grandma urging the green porch lizards to "show us your money" (that thing that happens when a lizard puffs out his throat).  i remember the smell of the four o'clocks, all purple and golden.  i remember the magnolia tree we used to climb, and the older ones used to carve their initials in.  that tree is old and knobby these days, but still standing.  mama tells me stories of christmases long ago when grandma would make pies and set them in the pie safe, ready for the family to gobble up at christmas celebrations.  there were no gifts in those days.  their stockings held apples, oranges, maybe a piece of penny candy or two if they were lucky.  christmas celebrations back then were a world apart from what they are now.  but she remembers them with very fine memories.

at the age of 16 mama married my daddy, a man 20 years her senior...i think he was close in age to her mama.  short, dark and handsome, that was my 100% sicilian daddy:)  beautiful thick black hair and swarthy complexion - if you look at his picture you would think he was a black man. they made a beautiful couple, cause mama was quite a looker.  yep, he robbed the cradle.  and her daddy signed her right over.  mama says daddy was like a prince to her family.  his family owned a grocery store in town, having imigrated from sicily before his birth. tho not rich, they were successful in their business, and i don't think they wanted for much. mama says daddy used to bring gifts to her brothers and sisters, was very good to them all, and my uncle still talks about how much they all adored him.  i guess he was a pretty darn good catch :)  their time together lasted 50+ years, when God called him home at the ripe old age of 90.  when we talk about mama's longevity, i always say, "come on ma, you gotta beat daddy." 

and today she has.  today she certainly has. happy birthday ma.  i pray you stick around a bit longer to tell the old old stories of times gone by that we could never imagine in our wildest dreams.