My family and I spent yesterday afternoon atop Lookout Mountain, at Paynes Chapel Methodist Church. Nikki was there, of course. So was my brother. We’d ridden in the family car from Lane Funeral Home. The trip up the mountain would’ve taken maybe fifteen or so minutes on a usual day, but at processional speed, it was twice or more as long. As we progressed, we kept noticing other drivers, people coming from the other direction, pulling over and stopping while we passed. A red pickup. A BMW. A Coca-Cola truck. You don’t see those signs of respect too much anymore.
We were there, sitting under a tent in the stifling summer heat, to say goodbye to my grandmother.
My grandmother — Mamaw, I called her — was a constant presence in my childhood home. She lived with us and had done so since a few years before I arrived.
With a few very brief interruptions, my grandmother kept me out of daycare centers and away from random babysitters for most of my childhood. I didn’t always appreciate it at the time, though I’ve always seen the two or three weeks I spent at Joyland Daycare as among the darkest I’ve known even to this day.
My mother left early for work. My father worked third shift for several years, then landed a better, similar schedule to my mom’s. Either way, it was up to Mamaw to make sure I was out of bed, fed a decent breakfast and on the van to kindergarten at a nearby church school. When I advanced from kindergarten to first grade, my initial weeks were heavy with an embarrassment I’d never known. My elementary school was right behind our house. Our back yard butted up against a run-off creek and on the other side was the playground. Being so close, I didn’t need a bus. But naturally, my grandmother saw fit to walk me to school. She relented only after I convinced her that she could just as easily watch my progress from the kitchen window. Which she did.
During the summer, I’d go with Mamaw on her semi-weekly outings with friends and relatives. She didn’t drive, never learned how, but needed to go to the bank on a weekly basis. Usually, this meant that her brother would have to do the driving. Her brother was Roy. His wife was named Sara. Roy had one of those deep North Georgia mountain accents that sounded rusty from lack of use, but he never said too much. He didn’t have to speak. Sara spoke enough for both of them and did so loudly. She was hard-of-hearing and thought so must be everyone else. Both of them went along for the bank jaunts. I never minded too much, as any trip to the bank meant I’d get a sucker of my choice and maybe a stop my Kresge’s or K-Mart.
Mostly, I kept to myself. I went out and played in the yard with Hot Wheels cars, or in my driveway with a basketball. Mamaw made sure that I was never lacking in Kool-Aid when I came inside. Other days, I’d watch television, game shows mostly. It was then that I’d fulfill perhaps the most important job of my kidhood. There were two telephone lines running into our house. The main line was for my parents. The second line, installed when I was three or four by a fellow from church who worked for South Central Bell, was for my grandmother entirely. And it rang almost constantly. My job, if Mamaw was on the other side of the house, was to answer it.
On the other end of the line would be one of several usual suspects in a large cadre of older ladies. They would call Mamaw to do one of two things. They would either give a report on the current medical condition of someone in their immediate, extended or expanded family, or they would wait to hear a similar piece of citizen journalism from my grandmother. I can’t say that I knew all of these callers my their voice alone, but all of them knew me.
“Hello, Tommy?* S’your Mamaw ’round?”
For her vast network of inquisitive ladies, my grandmother was a one-woman Internet. To pay for my services as switchboard operator, Mamaw would make peanut butter cookies. The kind known by the telltale stamp of a fork in the middle.
She never worked, my grandmother. Never held a proper job. But I think she took to heart her position as family and community communicator. Once a fact was received, she had it surely and would send it on down the line, just as accurately as it was initially heard. While the calls got fewer and fewer over time, as each of those ladies vacated their spots on this earthly network, I doubt that Mamaw ever once forgot one of those facts or the names involved.
My Mamaw’s voice defied simple description. It’s been said that my Mom’s voice sounds a bit like honey, sweet but substantial. Sustaining. If I think about their voices side-by-side, I can hear a bit of my Mom in Mamaw, only Mamaw’s is bit higher in tone, quite a bit more tentative, less refined. Mamaw’s voice sounded far older than she ever was, which probably threw people for a loop in light of her mental dependability.
I’ve been thinking about that voice today. I want to remember it as much as possible.
There are other stories, but they’ll keep. As much as my grandmother loved to pass on a good report, she knew what to keep for later too.
* – To this day, when you enter a five-mile radius from my parent’s house, my name reverts to the shape it had when I was very small, and there is little to be done about it now.
