Month: September 2026

My mother often told me the story of how I was born on a cold day in November. She repeated the tale speaking of how she and my father were living in a garage apartment in the Heights neighborhood of Houston. She was nine months pregnant when a fall wind brought pecans to the ground from a huge tree on the property. She donned my father’s wool army coat and sat down among the leaves to fill a paper sack with the delicious nuts. In the middle of her task her contractions began so she climbed the stairs to her rented home and called my father at his work. He came as quickly as possible and drove her to Height’s Hospital where I was born a few hours later. 

Mama seemed to repeat that story at the same time each year when fall used to bring cooler temperatures to southeast Texas. She would smile in remembrance and as I listened I felt the love in each of her words. It would be years before I was old enough to envision how young she was on that day of my birth and how much I was part of her dreams for the future. Now that I am growing older I view my mother’s life story through the lens of maturity and understand more and more how much she wanted me to understand the love that she felt for me.

My mother-in- law would often tell a similar tale of the time when my husband was born. She outlined the details of his birth as though she was speaking of it for the very first time. When I was younger such stories like hers and my mom’s irritated because I heard them over and over again. I did not realize then how much we mothers cherish the moments when our children enter this world. We truly change in that magical moment when we bring a new life into the long history of being human. While it may seem to be only a natural occurrence we somehow understand the spirituality of that miracle that is repeated over and over again in places far and near. 

Upon the recent death of one of my former students those of us who knew her immediately thought of her husband and her children. We understood the great loss that they were feeling. It was only when I attended the rosary for her that my attention turned to her parents who seemed to be in a kind of stupor as they no doubt recalled every moment of their child’s life. I found myself wondering if the young woman’s mother was remembering the day on which her daughter was born. Did she think of those cries from her baby and remember the first time her child took a step and began the journey of walking away into her own adult life? As an older woman I felt her pain in a way that I had not before considered. Losing a child no matter what the age has to be devastating. 

I have yet to meet a woman who did not have an almost sacred bond with her offspring. There are of course exceptions but most of the time a mother is tied to her babies in a mystical way that never fades throughout time. We give our adult children the wings that they need to fly away but our thoughts are with them every single day even when they are far away. I suppose that those stories of birth that my mother and mother-in-law told again and again were their way of remembering the solemn duty that they lovingly embraced to be part of creating a new human being to walk among us on this earth. 

I still remember my grandmother telling me stories of my father after he had died. Even as a child I realized how much she missed him. I knew the toll that his death had taken on my mother but my grandmother showed me how her bond with him was just as intertwined with her life. She was never the same person that she had once been after he was gone. She carried on with her life with courage and folksy optimism but a bit of the light in her eyes disappeared with his passing. 

My mother once told me that my grandmother had confided to her that she has lost her parents, her first husband and her siblings but it was the death of her child that hit her the hardest. I suppose that over time I realized more and more why losing a child is so tragic even when that child is an independent adult. I have since spoken with friends and relatives who have endured such a thing and everyone of them says the same thing. They never quite get over the death of a child. 

We humans tend to believe that there is a certain way that life should unfold. When the unthinkable happens it feels as though the whole universe has tilted and created a terrible catastrophe. Parenting never really ends even when we give our children the space that they need to become themselves. We think of them in the morning and before we fall asleep at night. We listen for their cries for help and worry when they seem to be awry. It is part of our nature as moms and no doubt as dads as well. 

Family bonds run deeply just as they should. We seem to be programed to watch over each other. Such feelings are part of every culture, every religion, every way of life. We are united in loving our children which makes wars created by individuals and groups yearning for power feel so wrong. The ordinary people are mostly wanting only to live their lives, take care of their families. War turns all of that atilt. 

For some reason I think of such things in this moment when the people of Ukraine are fighting for their freedoms after being invaded by Russia. I ponder the wars continuing in the Middle East. I know in my bones that mothers around the world only want their babies to be safe and wonder why we can’t find ways to live in peace. It should be more than just a mother’s dream to hope for an end to violence and loss and death. When will we ever learn?

It’s been so hot in my part of Texas for so many days that any thought of being outside is absurd. It only takes a short stroll from the car to the entrance of an air conditioned area to break into a massive sweat. I find myself anxiously longing for the slightly cooler days of October. I dream of the lovely climate of Maine when I visited there in late May and was able to participate in outdoor events without feeling as though I was on the verge of passing out. 

I am certain that climate change has indeed made summers in Texas far worse than they were when I was young but I still wish that I had the fortitude for laboring in the heat that I once possessed. I don’t know if my disdain for the high temperatures is the result of age or enjoying the luxury of air conditioning. What I do know is that the high temperatures don’t just annoy me. Of late they send me into a state of lightheadedness that tells my brain that I will literally faint if I don’t immediately cool down. 

When I was a child we visited my grandparents during the summer on their farm in Arkansas. They would rise early in the morning to tend their crops, feed their animals and milk their cow. By the time we woke up for breakfast they had already spent four or five hours taking care of business to insure that they would have a bumper crop of fresh fruit and vegetables for the winter but also to avoid working during the worst heat of the day. 

There was no air conditioning in their home but the house had been built in such a way that opening the right windows would create a breeze that cooled down the rooms on most days. They understood how to parse the hours of the day to make the most of the cool times for physical activities and then shut down in the afternoons when the sun became almost unbearable. Dealing with the clammy weather without appliances was something that my grandparents had done for all of their lives. 

I recall one day when the temperature was so high that it was even hard to breathe for us kids who were accustomed to running and playing all day long in the summer heat. In that moment my grandfather announced that we would go visit “the lady on the hill.” Of course I was immediately intrigued at the thought of an adventure and surely going to a place where a woman actually had a title like that made it all the more exciting. Besides riding in my grandfather’s car with the windows rolled down would at the very least create a breeze to blow over the sweat that was overtaking us. 

We climbed higher and higher on the road that lead from my grandparents’ home to the place where the mysterious sounding woman lived. Her property was the highest point in the tiny community and it was covered with the shade of trees that had been left in place to create a kind of oasis. Sitting under a big oak was an old woman so wrinkled that she appeared to be a hundred years old. She waved at my grandmother and grandfather as we exited the car and pointed to some chairs that seemed to be ready for our visit. We eagerly sat down immediately enjoying the coolness of the shade.

The old lady sat in a rocking chair holding a tuna fish can that she used to spit as she chewed on tobacco. While she seemed to have noticed that we had arrived she began telling a number of stories talking to herself as though she was the only person there. She mumbled and spat as though she was in some kind of trance. Now and again she would look at as like we were an apparition rather than a presence. I took my cues of how to act from my grandmother who would now and again touch my hand and smile at me as if the say that everything was quite normal and I should just enjoy the storytelling that the woman was providing us. 

Before long other people from the area arrived as though they understood that being there was part of a ritual on extremely hot days. Each time the lady would stop her speeches only long enough to wave the newcomers to the many chairs that stood under the trees. Then she would return to her performance of talking and spitting and telling tales that made no sense. 

Somehow I never felt uncomfortable in that situation. Instead I was entranced but I never really made sense of what I was witnessing. I only knew that the people there seemed to admire the lady and showed their appreciation of her with their silent attention to her soliloquy. Besides it was so cool in that place that I found myself feeling a bit enchanted. I surely had never before experienced a person like this woman in all of my short life and I knew in that moment that I would never forget her. 

Before long my grandparents decided that we needed to leave. More people were arriving and the seating was getting full. We had enjoyed our time getting cool and “visiting” with the lady and it was time to go home. Besides nature was calling one of my brothers and there was no bathroom on the property. In fact my grandmother explained on the way back to her home that theirs was the only house on the mountain that had indoor plumbing, a fact that astounded me. I had assumed that everyone in America enjoyed such modern conveniences and could not imagine anyone still wandering out to a pit in a little enclosure to relieve oneself. 

On the way back to my grandparent’s farm my grandmother schooled us in how the old time outhouses worked. She was always the supreme educator in spite of her illiteracy. I loved hearing about the whole process and the items that they used to be sanitary but had no desire to actually try such a system on my own. 

I have thought about that “lady on the hill”many times on really hot days. I even laughed when our current vice president claimed to be a hillbilly simply because he visited his grandmother who lived in similar conditions in the summer. I suppose that because of my grandparents and those adventures on their farm I might be a bit of a hillbilly as well. I certainly had my feet in a very different world each summer when I left the city of Houston and traveled to Caddo Gap, Aransas where the people seemed to be from a century other than my own. In many ways those ties widened my vision of the world and taught me to appreciate all people even when they felt a bit strange.

That lady had a kind of grace and stature in spite of her down-home ways. The people who knew her seemed to understand how important she was to their community. I’d love to be able to go back to tell her how much I enjoyed that visit. I suppose she is long gone by now and maybe enjoying sitting under a heavenly tree talking to the angels.