Great-Grandmother Dance

“Dance” was the name by which her grandchildren and great-grandchildren called my Great-grandmother Rose Jones Lancaster Love.  Dance was the only great-grandparent I recall knowing, I was sixteen when she died. She had married young, nobody knew exactly how young, for the exact year she was born she never revealed. A tiny, stooped little lady who was kind, but nonetheless formidable.

Rose Jones Lancaster Love

She gave us the run of her house when we visited, exacting proper behavior and  requiring picking up after ourselves before we left. The only picture I have of Dance appears here, from perhaps the mid-nineteen forties. Well into her old age she could do embroidery, needle work and made cozies of thread for the cocktail glasses which were brought out for the adults on every visit. I have been told by my parents that one drink was all they got from Dance, but it was invariably robust to the point of lasting throughout dinner.

Dance had no toys for children in her house, but she did have a large poker set complete with several sets of cards, and many poker chips. We busied ourselves with building card houses, stacking chips like trees or bushes grouped around the pasteboard constructions.

When the houses collapsed, we built them again, or played made-up games of cards. Occasionally we might forget ourselves and throw chips at each other, but one piercing look from Dance’s keen and unclouded eyes brought us up short.

The clean-up process was quite educational, as it happened, since the decks of cards had to be grouped into complete decks by suit and color, including the pattern on the backs, which were different for each deck.

Dinner was always formal, sit down with the children at the main table. We were always interested in the buzzer concealed beneath the carpet by Dance’s chair, ready to be pressed to summon Gussie, the cook, from the kitchen with the different courses. We never quite dared to press this buzzer ourselves, though. I don’t think my grandchildren would be similarly deterred.

Dance grew up in the piney woods of southeastern Georgia, near Folkston, close to the Florida line, just to the east of the Okefenokee Swamp. I never knew this until much later in life. Odd to find it out, as the comic strip Pogo was one of my favorites, and I am sure discussions on the comics would have been interesting, although not so much to Dance. Her family had a turpentine business, tapping pine trees for sap, distilling it into turpentine and selling it to various customers. Dance was visiting a school friend in Chattanooga when she met George Dent Lancaster, and in due course married him. Her first child, Marshall, was born in 1898. My grandmother Phyllis was born in 1901. When it came time to record her birth for her tombstone, her second husband, Walter Love and my grandmother computed her likely birth year as 1878. That would have made Dance 83 when she died in 1961. A good old age for someone born in the South under Reconstruction, in depressed times.

George’s story is more detailed, and more lively. I will get to my Great-grandfather in another post.

April’s Cruelty

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.

Cheery thought from Thomas Stearns Eliot. This last day of April, a month of mixed pleasures and anxieties.

The land is not wasted, yet, but I grow old, like another of Eliot’s creations, but my trousers drag behind my feet, no waist to hold them up. Such indiginities of age and ungoverned appetites.

But April ended well, sitting with the grandchildren whilst their parents worked to earn the pleasures their children will remember long into the deepening century. Love of family is a great thing, a lesson I was long in learning.

Sweet Jane

I attended this morning a breakfast meeting at the Orange Grove Center, a service agency here in Chattanooga for persons with various physical and developmental challenges. The Center provides training, classes and group homes. The organization runs recycling for the City of Chattanooga, entirely staffed by clients. I was invited to the meeting by friends of mine who have a son in one of the group homes.

While I listened to speakers outlining the goals and programs of Orange Grove, I thought of that young man, and of a little girl from long ago in my extended family. When I was fourteen, my mother re-married, into a large and close-knit family, at one stroke providing my sisters and me with a small army of step-cousins and uncles and aunts. At family gatherings, held frequently, one of the cousins was always Jane.

I don’t know the details of Jane’s condition, but the challenges she faced were formidable. Phsically, she could do pretty much what any child could, but developmentally, she remained a very young child, never mastering speech, needing constant supervsion to keep her safe. Her family loved her. All the extended family loved her. Her parents were able to keep her at home; I don’t remember if she ever participated in any Orange Grove programs.

Although Jane could not speak, she had no trouble communicating. At every gathering, her cousins flocked around her, and her face was wreathed in beautiful smiles and her infectious laugh could be heard like a bubbling stream of joy. Everybody showered love on Jane, and she returned it in double measure.

Jane did not live to physical maturity, the problems of whatever had limited her development gradually affected her health, and at eleven or twelve, I don’t remember exactly after so many years, Jane died. She suffered a panic attack, which precipitated heart failure. Her physical heart failed, but her wordless love and joy carried on in the family; I am sure it does still, although I am no longer in contact with many of my steps.

Some lives may seem limited by the sort of circumstances that faced Jane and her family, but I can guarantee that not one person who knew her felt that life was not a gift for Jane, and for her family. Orange Grove exists to facilitate that gift for each client, and their families.

Fegi

Another birthday today, it would have been my father’s 89th. Nine years gone, we marked his birthday with a lunch, my mother, his cousin Upshur, my Barbara and I, reminiscing about Fegi. And about Miller, his cousin, who died shortly after his own 23rd birthday, on October 8, 1944.

I gave Upshur some letters sent from Miller to Fegi in the summer of 1944, first from England, then from France, as the Allied armies pushed eastward through France. Wry, joking young man’s words, telling amusing stories of England and a girl. More somber thoughts when Miller was deep in France.

We talked and laughed and remembered my father, and his lost cousin. Then we left the club and Barbara and I eventually went home, after a stop for provisions. It was time for the final ceremony of the day, mixing memorial martinis, my father’s favorite drink. I used to do this solo, but now we would share the moment. We toasted my father, sipped our martinis, and I introduced my father’s spirit to his daughter-in-law of two months’ official status. Daddy often told me how much he liked Barbara, and I think he is smiling somewhere now at how we finally observed our own ceremony, and tied ourselves to time and each other.

Happy Birthday, Fegi. We love you.

Cluster of Birthdays

This week marks three birthdays of people close to me. The granddaughter is older sooner than I thought possible. She is now reading words and simple sentences in her books, identifying the letters. It was only a short while ago that my Beloved and I stood outside the birthing suite where her parents were, and heard the first fretful wail.  Joy and Rejoicing had arrived, and wonders continue to multiply.

The little girl’s father also celebrated a birthday this week, taken out by his loving wife after spending most of the week bearing the brunt of child care for our granddaughter and grandson. We did our part by babysitting overnight.

Finally, a great friend of mine, who now lives in another state, will rack up another year, and I sent him the usual joking email about advancing age. He concurred on age and early bedtimes for old folks.

The years roll on, bringing joys and aging and still there are things to learn and for which I give thanks, probably not enough.

For Some Things Let Us Be Truly Thankful…

Happy Thanksgiving to all who feel in the mood. I spend a lot of time dwelling on problems, both personal and societal, so on this one day I will think of the good things. And probably eat too much. I am thankful for my Beloved, who brings a smile into my everyday life, and loves the grandchildren more than life itself. I know, as she does, what love is because of them.

We saw the Twin Tornadoes, or experienced them, over Tuesday night. Wednesday morning I tried to ride herd on them at the playground, which was not a large place but each child managed to get out of my sight more than once. As we left the playground to meet up with my daughter-in-law for Children transfer, the little girl suddenly wanted to go back a minute to hug her newest best friend, another four-year-old we had never seen before. Life is good when you are four. And watching the grandchildren allows me to feel that way again.

Being old and never quite unaware of the Real World, I noticed today’s date and remembered why we should treasure playground moments with our children and grandchildren, while others had such moments cut short. Forty-four years ago the Real World cashed in John F. Kennedy’s chips, and his children grew up without him. There are many moments I can remember when the dimensions of the world’s evil and the problems we face bore in on me. But that day, with events in Dallas unfolding in horror, was the most shocking.

I must hold onto days like yesterday and the night before, against the dark that comes, soon or late.

Birthday Boy

Thirty-seven years ago, I looked through the glass window of the hospital nursery to behold a screaming, still slightly blue, mass of wiggling boy-flesh who a few minutes before had been born, via a long night ending with a Caesarean section at 6:44 a.m. Or thereabouts. The minutes and such no longer seem nearly as important to an old man as they were to me, a younger (26) man and new father when I stood there looking at my new son. Firstborn. I recognized him. I knew him and could have picked him out of the thirty-odd other babies, I am sure.

Many years, another son and much joy, moderate ordinariness and some pain later, I still look at each son each time as though for the first time, and I know them. After thirty-seven and thirty-five years, there is a lot more basis for my knowledge. And still I measure my life largely by being a father, with faults and strengths and chance and wonder.

That measure is not binding on them, for they have lives they increasingly defined for themselves, thank God they had the wit and strength and (once they were past adolescence) wisdom to make good lives. They are both good men, primarily to their own credit, with assistance from their parents, their extended family and good friends, in school and out. But they have made their own way. I could wish no better for them.

Did I mention I love my sons, and now my grandchildren, as much as I have ever loved anything in my life? I hope that the love shows. It needs to be said, as well, sometimes, and birthdays are convenient times. I love you, Son. And you, too, his brother, although today the firstborn takes another sort of precedence.

I am blessed, and I pray blessings on the lives of my sons and their families, and wish them long lives lived as well as they have started.

Selah.

Life and Leaving It

I realized this morning that today is Ascension Day in the church calendar. On this day Jesus, for those who believe, left his disciples behind after having continued his ministry with them following his resurrection, and ascended to heaven. He left this life, but the important part of his life remained with his disciples.

There is a congruence with the significance of this day in how I spent part of my morning. I went to visit an older cousin of mine, who was of the same generation as my father, though a considerably younger man. I had heard through the family that his health, long in decline, had reached the point that merited the involvement of Hospice. Death, though not immediate in prospect, will not be long in coming, in his physician’s estimation. My cousin will leave this life behind. He will, however, in some measure match the example of Jesus, and leave the best of his life in the memories and hearts of his family and friends.

As I left after my brief visit to him—he tires quickly, and his wife guards his strength—I was walked to the door by his wife, whom I have known since I can remember knowing any adults. She, like my cousin, has always been kind beyond measure to me and my immediate family. I told her so, as I had told my cousin a few minutes before. Strokes had left him unable to answer except with a much brighter smile and an extended hand, which I grasped. His wife hugged me, hard, and I hugged back.

I left that house so much cheered and refreshed that I felt a bit guilty. I had not stayed long, and had said nothing very profound or even very comforting, to my mind. But I had gone. I had seen my cousin, in his weakness and did not show any pity or distaste, for I felt none. We were family, however extended, joining ranks in a time of trouble.

In my youth I thought little about family, impatient with my older relatives who set such store by the value of a close, extended family. I was wrong in that, as in other things. Age and time may be the only cures for stupidity, at least for the fortunate.

Today I felt very fortunate, indeed, and attended the small daily noontime service at St. Paul’s church. We heard the lessons for Ascension Day and I thought of the inevitability of death and how the sting is somewhat lessened, in contemplation and I hope in personal experience, by the warm support of those you have loved and who loved you in turn. There is little else of worth in life, I think, and this shared warmth is the surest taste of immortality we have here.

Then he led them out as far as Bethany, and, lifting up his hands, he blessed them. While he was blessing them, he withdrew from them and was carried up into heaven. And they worshiped him, and returned to Jerusalem with great joy; and they were continually in the temple blessing God.— from Luke 24:50-53 NRSV

My Father’s Birthday, part 2

One addendum to my previous post. My father was a gentleman in the sense a rigorous southern upbringing instills, and a gentle man. A poem which has always been a favorite of mine speaks of a father, who is implored not to go gently into death’s shadow, but to rage against the dying of the light.

My father outwardly did not rage as he was dying. That was both the southern conditioning, and his personal gentleness. But he certainly fought the approaching dark, however many times he lost ground in his final illness. As he entered the hospital for what would be the last time, he told the admitting physician that he had to get out in time for my younger son’s wedding, in two week’s time. He had picked out the suit he would wear, and was looking forward to the event. He wasn’t raging, just stating his intention.

I thought of that last week this morning, as I read the Prayers of the People at early service. At the portion of the reading where are listed those who died in the past week, I mentally added his name. As I do every week. As I do for my mother, and when their birthdays come around, my grandparents. This light may have died for all of them, but their light lives in their descendants.

At any rate, I will post here the poem referenced above, which I posted yesterday on my home page. Today that entry will be replaced with another, but I would like to post it here, not to relinquish the thought.

April 21, 2007

Felix G. Miller, Jr.

April 21, 1920-September 13, 2000

Selah.

DO NOT GO GENTLE INTO THAT GOOD NIGHT

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas

A Martini for Fegi

Felix G. Miller, Jr.

April 21, 1920 to September 13, 2000

Today would have been my father’s 87th birthday. He died in September of 2000, at the age of 80 years. I think of him often, and always on this day. As with anybody who has lost a parent or relative (or other person, blood kin is not always necessary for love,) frequently thoughts or events will occur that I mentally mark as “I must tell Daddy this.” Then, of course, I remember.

My father worked right up until a month before his death, finally succumbing to congestive heart failure. As he failed, he continued to go downtown to work, dependent on other colleagues to drive him to and from work. Each night, upon arriving home, he would mix himself a stout martini, his one treat which he would not abandon.

During the last weeks of his life, even though he could no longer go to work, he maintained his six o’clock martini. By this time, I was dropping by in occasional evenings or days to sit with him while my stepmother was at work. One evening, I made the mistake of offering to mix Daddy’s martini for him. For a man known for his gentility of manner, the response was almost acerbic. “No. I know just how I want it made. Thank you anyway.” And he proceeded to mix his martini with a ceremonial care worthy of a Japanese tea ceremony.

Two fingers of gin. A breath, no more, of vermouth. Two fat, pimentoed olives. Over cubes of ice, neither shaken nor stirred, just poured. Slow, careful sips, pauses between to let the gin work, his eyes wandering over the house and furniture he must surely have known he would soon leave. He and my stepmother had built the house almost forty years before, decorated it with my stepmother’s impeccable taste and flair, with family pictures and art sharing space. My youngest sister had been raised there, birthdays on the patio, a little boy guest stomping on all the balloons. I was there for that one. A dog for her to chase over the broad lawn rolling down to the bluff.

Spacious windows looked out over the Tennessee River, now, in these later years, obscured by the growth of trees from just below the bluff. Once, Daddy had inched his way down the slope to trim the trees, to preserve the view. But that was years ago.

So my father sat in his leather chair facing the glass wall of the house, looking in his mind’s eye at the view now shrouded by trees, and at what memories I could not guess. Some were surely of this house, some of his lost cousin who was buried in a military cemetery in France, some of friends, relatives and others gone before him.

I think that tonight, in the twilight, I shall make a martini, two fingers of gin, please, just pass the vermouth over the glass. And two large olives plump with pimentos.

I am not sure if my father will know, but I am sure he would enjoy it.

Cheers.