Mama Hattie stood a scant five feet. She never learned to drive. She didn’t go to college. She stuck around the community—a cluster of houses and stores alongside a bend in the road. But she towers in my memory because of the magical summers spent with her in the north Georgia mountains.
Tag: essay
Space Enough for God, Mama Hattie, and a Whale (Part One)
It’s the small things that keep a person alive. Take my grandmother, Mama Hattie. She made it to ninety-five. She was born in a wagon-and-mule era and died the day an astronaut stepped from the space shuttle to test heating devices in the toe caps of his boots.
Her obituary said she was somebody’s wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, sister, and aunt. But she was so much more.
A Mom to Love: Wonder Woman Without the Skimpy Suit
My clearest memory is my mother’s crescent-shaped blue eyes dancing while we taste freshly baked chocolate chip cookies and sip from cool glasses of milk. I feel her gathering me onto her lap because the boy I loved broke up with me. I hear the mellow dinner bell ringing in the backyard and her voice at twilight calling us to come in for supper. Her love did not overlook. Not one of us. Not once.
Marjoram in the Mail: Home-grown Gift Travels 850+ Miles
How often do you get a “personal” message—meaning a handwritten note from someone you actually know—versus a “personalized” brand communication using your first name? With my real-time and virtual mailboxes constantly bombarded, I didn’t think about it much until a letter with carefully packaged dried marjoram showed up from Des Moines, Iowa.
You Can’t Take the Country Boy out of the Man
Was I lucky to have a dad obsessed with transplanting north Georgia mountain tradition to Alabama soil? I didn’t think so, especially on Saturday afternoons. While the neighbors’ kids played kickball on the cul-de-sac, our family tended the crops on the utility easement. There was nothing sentimental about growing squash, zucchini, cucumbers, tomatoes, okra, corn, and beans, beans, beans—until now.