The Sacrificing of Henrietta

In my ongoing endeavor to learn one new thing about my mom every time I call her....I give you: Henrietta's Sacrifice.

My mom told me a lot about my grandfather during this particular conversation.  He worked for the railroad like her father.  He was from Virginia and fell in love with North Carolina when he laid eyes on her majestic foothills.  He brought his family to live there.  He used to give my mom a nickel for every bucket of acorns she could gather.  He used it to feed his hogs.  Sometimes he would carve the acorn into a ring for her finger.  
"He would peel it like an apple," she said.  "It had the most beautiful colors. Red, orange, gold, brown...but the next day it would turn dark brown and shrivel away."

That's not all he made for his grand daughter, my mother.  Out of the branches of a sugar gum tree he would use his knife to whittle her a tooth brush with bristles.  
"We'd dip it in baking soda," she informed me.  (Side note: she still has all her teeth :)
One day my mom was at her grandparents' house and it was nearing dinner time.   Henrietta, one of their hens, had stopped laying eggs.  So...she was to become dinner.  Her grandmother enlisted my mom's help in chasing Henrietta around the back side of the house.  Her grandmother used her apron to scare it out and get it on the run....when my mom came around the corner, she witnessed her grandmother going inside the back door...with a limp Henrietta in her hands.  
"She didn't want me to see her wring her neck. She plucked her and boiled her and made dumplings too," my mom recalls.  She was devastated that sweet Henrietta who had given all she could had now paid the final sacrifice for the good of her family. She was Sunday dinner.  In comes my mom's grandfather to eat.  They are all seated around the table when her grandfather bows his head to say the blessing and as he gives thanks to God for the food on the table and for all His provisions, he weeps.
"I knew, in my little girl mind, that he was crying over Henrietta.  So I joined him in protest and refused to eat her," she said.  
It was years later that my mom realized her grandfather wept a lot when it was time to pray.  "I only thought he was sad over Henrietta that day.  He was just overwhelmed with God's goodness.  Now, I understand."
And so do I.  I had to pack and move house this week.  We found a great deal and great, selfless friends helped us pack and move.  I know how my great grandfather must've felt.  So many blessings surround me.  

I am thankful for an army of allies who swooped in to take my kids to school while Rob was out of town and they missed the bus while I was at work (twice).
I am thankful for a great grandfather who was strong enough to farm the land and meek enough to weep in front of his grand daughter.
I am thankful that grand daughter was marked forever by his prayers and passed it along.
I am thankful for Carolina acorns and homemade dumplings.
I am thankful that I don't have to chase my dinner before I cook it.
I am thankful for tooth brushes that are NOT homemade and memories that are.

James 1:17 ^"Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows."

Pig and a Blanket

That's my mom on the left :)

This recent cold snap had me thinking about my mom and my resolution to learn one new thing about her every time I called.  "I wonder how she kept warm in a winter like this?" I thought....and so, I found out.
Coal.  A coal burning stove heated the house room - one room - where they all gathered and lived all winter.  Her mom would put a quilt down by the stove and they stayed there all day, coloring or doing homework...in that one warm spot.
For fifteen dollars her dad would buy one ton of coal.  One TON.  It was usually enough to last all winter but some winters were tougher than others and that's when the whole family would make their way to Mud Cut Curve.  That's where the coal train would take a curve and, if they were lucky and the train took it fast enough, coal would fall off the top and land by the tracks.  Each kid was given a sack and they filled it with whatever coal they could find along the tracks.  "It was heavy!" she said of this chore.  It was cold out - and because they had no gloves or mittens, their mom would put their dad's work socks over their little hands.  At night, their mom took a brick, heated it in the stove, wrapped it up and put it in their beds to keep them warm.  "We'd have so many quilts on top of us, we couldn't move," she said.
"Once I got up in the night to get a drink from the water bucket but it was so cold the dipper had frozen into the water - it was all ice," she said.  I was about to suggest that she should've just gone to the sink but then I remembered...no indoor plumbing.  (We're so spoiled, rich, blessed.)

"I was in charge of keeping the coal bucket full," she informed me.  "I'd take my bucket out to the coal pile to fill it but I had to be careful because of the rooster.""What?  A rooster?  Please. Continue," I begged. "We had a banty rooster," she explained.  "We had no underpinning to the house so it would stay up under the porch. Every time I went to the coal pile, it chased me and attacked my legs.  I spilled half the bucket getting back into the house."

"Mom," I say...."this is heartbreaking.  How did you survive your childhood?"

"We were fine.  We were never sick.  We didn't know we were poor.  We had a hog in our closet."

Hold it right there.  

My mom had a pig in her closet.  I had to pause and let that sink in.

Not a pet pig and not a regular closet.  It's the tiny room where they hung up their salted meat for the winter.  Can you imagine having a pig hanging on a meat hook in your pantry?  And just slicing off whatever you needed, whenever you needed it?  Imagine the endless bacon.

"So you had hogs and chickens? Mom, your dad worked for the railroad but it sounds like he was a farmer," I say.

"Everyone had to have those things, and a garden too, just to live," she said.  "My earliest memory was there in that house on the front porch. My legs were dangling over the side and I was swinging them back and forth watching my daddy fix the plow."

"No," she said again.  "We didn't know we were poor."

And maybe, on second thought, they weren't.