Lisa Vollrath’s countdown to Christmas
Lisa Vollrath, found objects creator and all-around artist, provides downloadable images to use in your projects at http://countdown.tentwostudios.com. Check her out!
Simply Nan
Sitting at home in an overstuffed chair with my legs thrown over one arm and my head snuggled against the other, I held a letter from my grandmother. My eyes relaxed, then lost focus as I stared out of the living room window and brought the letter to my nose. There it was—the familiar smell of dampness, moth balls, and Lysol disinfectant that permeates my grandmother’s home in Arkansas.
The smell never fails to comfort me as I remember the long childhood days of my life and my grandmother: my Nan who has always been the center of my world. Thinking of her, I smiled and pictured her lying on the couch watching television some 1,200 miles to the southwest of me. By this time of day—late afternoon—she’d probably completed her household chores, and my grandfather would not yet be home from the country store, where he spends most of his free time gossiping with the local farmers.
Their home—a small, three-bedroom rancher with red brick trim and sky blue vinyl siding—is nothing spectacular. Sitting on one of many long, unpaved roads that spread across the foothills of the Ozarks, it’s surrounded by three acres of yard that stop abruptly at a fence, which divides the yard from forty acres of pasture; a large pond; and a great, old tree that branches out to form a canopy. Another farm, covered in a sprawling mass of railroad ties wrapped in grapevines, butts up to the property on one side and fills in the land across the street as far as the eye can see.
Like her home, Nan is a simple woman. She doesn’t need much more than God and an occasional Matlock rerun. But she hasn’t always been that way. As a young woman, my grandmother was stubborn, impatient, and alive with energy. At sixteen, she gave up her education—something she eventually came to regret—and secretly married my grandfather. Her mother, my great-grandmother Schmidt, was incredibly upset, but Nan believed it was her life to do with as she wanted. And she wanted my grandfather.
Their romance began about a year before they married, when my grandfather returned from Japan after World War II. They met at Ma’ Brown’s restaurant in downtown Judsonia, Arkansas, the town where my grandmother grew up. Ma’ Brown was considered “the best cook you ever saw in your life,” according to Nan, and her restaurant was where the young and single went to match-make. My grandfather is a good-looking man; in his youth, he resembled Elvis Presley. That’s what drew my grandmother to him. “The way he carried himself…,” she told me once. “He just stood up so tall and swung his head around there like he was somebody. And his smile…”
Fifty-three years later and my grandparents are married still. Nan says it hasn’t been easy, that you have to work at marriage. My grandfather hasn’t offered much of an opinion, but they both credit Christianity for keeping their marriage whole. “When times are hard, you have to find strength in the good Lord above,” Nan always says. She believes that if you know what the Bible says, life can’t shock you too much.
It’s this simple, yet sure, wisdom that makes my grandmother who she is. Sometimes, when she gets going on the topic of faith, the rest of the family will offer a few “uh huhs” before tuning out completely. But she never quits, and in this way, she gives us all a lesson in perseverance.
When I think about Nan, I am sometimes tickled by her sheer innocence in the midst of chaos. In this way, she is somewhat of a comical character. She doesn’t try to be funny, she just is. For instance, a few years ago, she and my grandfather were cleaning up her childhood home, preparing to renovate it. She was outside sweeping a side porch when my grandfather came along on his bush-hogger—a tractor that trims bushes along fencerows. The machine caught the broom that Nan was sweeping with and she was thrown off the porch. My grandfather, who had no idea what he’d done, just kept right on his way.
That same week, my grandfather asked Nan if she would hold a wheel down so he could remove the tire. When he couldn’t get the tire to budge, he began beating the wheel with a sledgehammer. Not only did Nan suffer from a sore backside that week, she got her fingers smashed, too.
It’s the way my grandmother deals with such calamities that makes them funny. She has a way of dusting herself off and going on with a shake of her head, as if she just can’t believe what her life has come to. But she always retaliates in her own, quiet way, usually by serving something inedible for dinner or making something wonderful and keeping it to herself.
Considering my grandparents’ slapstick life, I asked Nan not long ago what she considers a perfect day. “Well, today was pretty good,” she said. “I went to church. I went out to eat. I sang songs to people at the old folks’ home. I visited a friend who’s in the hospital. I went to the house and lay down on the couch. I let Papa go to the store and talk to his buddies without fussin’. And now I’m talking to one of my kids. That’s a pretty good day, I’d say.”
I couldn’t believe she could be satisfied, much less happy, with what I considered to be an ordinary, run-of-the-mill day. So I questioned her again, asking how such monotony could be perfect. She answered by telling me a story about a day she was feeling a little low and said a prayer, asking God to give her something that would make her happier. Later that day, she said she attended a ladies’ luncheon at her church. The theme was Light Up the Corner Where You Are. The women talked about lighting up the place—any place—that God saw fit for them to be at any given time—to think positively, to smile, to do something good for somebody else. Nan said she felt God answered her prayer through that lesson: “The good Lord taught me how to be happy. If I’m not happy, it’s my own fault. If you’re happy, you’re going to make other people happy. Be a light.”
Suddenly, my cat jumped onto the arm of the chair I was sitting in, forcing me from my reverie, and I noticed that I was still holding Nan’s letter in my hand. In the margins, she’d drawn smiley faces and stick figures and jotted down afterthoughts such as “remember to lock your car doors when you’re out after dark.” Her letter was mostly about the weather, the silliness her cat has been up to, how many calves my grandfather’s cows have given birth to, and how she ate too much at last Sunday’s church potluck. She also wrote that I needed to find a church, and she gave me the addresses—again—of all the Church of Christ churches within driving distance. As was her habit, Nan had tucked several pieces of paper into the envelope as well. There was a poem from her church bulletin, an article from the local newspaper highlighting the achievement of a family member, and, finally, a scrap of paper with the words, “Follow your dreams. Dream big and dream good, then follow them.”
Throughout my life, I’ve known many well-traveled people who can easily engage me in long, interesting, philosophical conversations. Nan hasn’t traveled much and our weekly telephone conversations usually don’t result in world-changing, “aha” moments. What she contributes to my life is an example of how to live. She believes happiness is within everybody’s control. From watching her, I know it is.
Mother
When I met her, it had been 10 years since she’d seen her son—and then, only for a moment. This, I knew, was partly my fault, and so I had no idea how she would receive me.
Upon arriving at her home in India, I saw her sitting in the family courtyard next to her husband of 45 years; a dark blue sari fashioned of georgette and sprinkled with an intricate motif was wrapped around her tiny frame. Her eyes spoke of a fulfilled, yet hard life. It was as if she held all the answers to earth’s secrets and those secrets saddened her. That first night, tears swelled in her eyes and flowed down the valleys of her face.
Her body tells the story of her life, not in whispers, but in outbursts. Her skin is now dry and thick and heavily lined—ashy, rough, hard. Each sun-induced wrinkle, every callus tells of long hours spent prodding thin, bony, undernourished oxen through fields. Bloated, leather-like feet hint at standing barefoot year after year in dirty, brown water while harvesting rice. Sagging skin around her midsection gives away the fact that she’s given birth to six children. The nuances of her body reveal the moments of her life. Looking at her is like looking at a collection of memories.
Her name is Bhuri Bai. Her children call her “maji,” which means “respected mother” in Hindi. She is the matriarch of a large family in Semara, a small village in India’s Chattisgargh State. She belongs to the Sutnami caste and is a descendent of Saint Guru Ghasidas, a great fighter against social injustice. She usually is quiet and reserved, but when she does speak, her voice is like a thousand little bells being tickled by the wind.
When I arrived at her home in India, I followed the lead of my husband—her son—and knelt at her feet, reaching down to lightly touch her bare, leathery toes before bringing my hand back to my forehead. I performed this act of respect twice before she laid her hand on my head, lifted my face so that my eyes met hers, and kissed each of my cheeks. This is how she accepted me as her daughter.
Seeing me for the first time may have reminded her of when she met her mother-in-law. She had traveled several miles from her village to Semara to marry a man she did not know, to join a family she had never met. Her marriage was arranged like most were then and as many are today.
On the day of her wedding, she was dressed in a silk sari, her shiny black hair braided with gold pins and flowers. Elaborate, henna-stained designs were drawn on her hands, and bangles clattered at her wrists. She wore ornate gold jewelry around her neck, in her nose, on her fingers. She was veiled and led by family members to the village monument—a 20-foot log painted white and cemented into the ground—where she and the groom were blessed with incense. They walked seven times around the monument, stopping each round to pour water on the ground from a small metal cup. After the seventh round, the groom cracked open a coconut and offered it to the memory of Saint Guru Ghasidas before he and Bhuri Bai fed pieces of it to each other. This is how her new life began.
Kneeling before her the night we met, I believe she looked into my eyes and saw the same fear she felt on her wedding day. I believe she understood my disorientation. I was so far from home. But I knew she was happy that I loved her son and had joined his journey. I believe she looked past her expectations of who her son would marry, past my skin color and my culture because she is a mother.
Today, I still feel Maji’s unconditional love. Sometimes I look at the jewelry she gave me or the sari I wore during my Indian wedding and wonder if someone will look at me 40 years from now and see the story she’s written on my life. I hope so.
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