My Greatest Achievements

I have three beautiful, empathetic and loving children. I suppose that I might claim that they are my greatest achievements but I don’t think that that claim is truly legitimate. I have made many mistakes in parenting. I have told my kids that they did not come with manuals and even if they had, that manual would have likely gone into a file with all of the other unread manuals. I know that I have not been a perfect mother and I have made mistakes but all of those mistakes were made with love. So, I feel that I cannot claim my children as my greatest achievements. They have grown into beautiful adults in spite of me!

I suppose that what I feel is my greatest achievement that I can claim has been starting The Family Quilt.


                                        


The Family Quilt has been around now since Jan 20, 2013. It began as an idea in the mind of a person who was totally unfamiliar with computers and quite content to stay that way. It began a few years prior to its actual debut as the result of the 2009 Good Friday tornado that ripped through my parents’ neighborhood in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. That tornado totally destroyed a detached garage and my parents’ vehicles. It wiped out nearly every tree in their yard, and their yard had many trees. The 2-3 trees that did survive were hickory trees. I imagine you have heard of the strength of hickory…..well, believe it.

A gaping wound was left on the house where the attached garage had been and a beam had been blown through their living room ceiling, but except for that damage, the house pretty much remained in good shape. Thanks God that my parents and my niece were unharmed!

How did this lead to the Family Quilt? Well, my parents moved out of their house into an apartment after the tornado hit. We packed their entire house up and moved it into a storage pod in their driveway. We did this so that their home could be fixed and my husband could oversee some renovations that they had been wanting to make.

So, as I said, we packed their entire house up, and while doing that packing, we came upon the myriad photos they had collected over the years. When we came upon those photos, the horror dawned upon me of how close we had come to losing them forever.

Of course, I couldn’t resist looking at some of those photos as we packed. Many of the folks I recognized, but a few I could not place. I asked Mom and Dad for their identities. Sometimes they could provide the answer and other times they were unsure. As we were packing those photos, I told Mom and Dad, that I knew that there was some way to scan those pics and store them on the computer. I did not own a computer, I did not own a scanner and I certainly did not know how to use them. I had to have one of my kids show me how to turn my laptop on when I first got it! That is how tech-challenged I was…..and I haven’t progressed a whole lot since then.

So I took Mom and Dad’s photos home with me. I eventually got a laptop and a scanner. I got folks, usually my brother-in-law, to show me how to use them enough to scan and store those pics. I began scanning them and editing those scans…..album after album, storage box after storage box. It was a rather long and arduous process, at least for someone who really didn’t know what she was doing. It wasn’t easy, but it was a labor of love, and that made it impossible for me to give up!

Of course, it was impossible for me to just scan these photos without looking at them. Of course, looking at these photos made me pretty maudlin. I would see a pic of Grandpa Smith with a twinkle in his eyes and a mischievous grin on his face and I would remember how he told me that he had a giant friend that lived in the hills. He told me that when I saw mist in the hills, his giant friend was smoking his pipe. I’d see a pic of Grandma Smith and remember her shuffling barefoot around the kitchen as she cooked up some simple yet delicious fare. I’d see a photo of my Grandma Rachel Nolen who died when my Mom was nine. I’d see that photo of the Grandma that I never met and I wondered about her. I longed to know her. I yearned to learn about the life of that tall slender lady in the photo. I’d see an unidentified photo and really feel a kind of sickness that this person, most likely kin to me, could no longer be identified by family.

Looking through these pics made me long to see more photos and to know more about the people in those photos. Seeing these photos made me wish that my own children could’ve known Grandma and Grandpa Smith. It made me wish that I could know about my Grandma Nolen who I never met, and to know more about Grandpa Nolen also. Seeing those pics just filled me with a yearning that I suppose was like an itch. I just had to scratch! But, just like you have that itch right in that place on your back that you just cannot reach, I needed help.

I thought about having some kind of reunion where everyone could bring their pics together. I figured that each family would probably have a few pics and if we could put all of those fews together, we could end up with a lot! I also figured that those unknown folks might be identified. One family member may not have been acquainted with the unidentified family member, but another may have gone to visit them all of the time! And while everyone was together, I could scan them all so they could be preserved somehow.

But who was I kidding! The logistics of all of us actually getting together was daunting, if even possible. So I kept thinking about what would be the best way to accomplish the same goal without having to get everybody physically together. This was an idea that was ever present, even if in the back of my mind. I came to the reluctant conclusion that the best way to do this was somehow using the internet. I say reluctant, because I am the person who had just recently learned to turn on my laptop! But I knew that folks could be “together” virtually when being together physically might prove impossible. So I began to explain my idea to computer-savvy family members and I asked what they thought would be the best means to accomplish this. I asked if there was some kind of program or any other way to accomplish this. I even had a name for my project, the Family Quilt. Several family members told me that they thought a Facebook group might be the best way to go.

Now, I had heard about Facebook. I did not have an account, because frankly, I had heard some very negative things about it, but I had heard about it. I was reluctant to go that route and I continued to ask folks how my goals might be accomplished. It had to be a way that a nearly computer illiterate person could handle.

So I kept trying to find the best way. I asked folks at the reunion about it. I continued to ask other folks who knew computers. I continued to search…..and in the meantime, I was losing family members. I was not only losing them, but I was losing their ability to participate and contribute their stories, straight from the horses’ mouths to our Family Quilt. I didn’t yet know how the Quilt would come to be, but I was determined that it would indeed be!

We lost Aunt Hortense Smith Allen only 10 days after that tornado. Dad was not even able to go to her funeral because he was busy trying to, not only handle the aftermath of the tornado, but also the realization that we are never completely in control of our lives. We lost Uncle Gayle Smith. We lost Aunt Davilee Smith Sutherland Clark. When we lost Uncle Johnnie Nolen, it was like a kick in the pants! I knew that something less than perfect was better than waiting for a possibly nonexistent perfect. I decided that I was going to get an account on Facebook and start a group called the Family Quilt.

So, I waited until my daughter Roxanna could help me. She sat up the account for me and she set up the group the Family Quilt for me. She helped me make the initial post explaining the purpose of the Quilt and we added a few people to it. I cannot remember how many folks we initially added, but it was probably about a handful. That was on Jan 20, 2013. On January 20, 2021, it will be eight years since the Family Quilt was formed. Now, we have 257 members and we are still growing. Some of these family members I have not had the pleasure to meet in person. I haven’t actually met them, but I am happy to get to know them a little through our Quilt.

So that is the story of how my greatest achievement came to be. Mothers, grandmothers, great-grandmothers… in my family have made beautiful quilts over the centuries. Those quilts were collections of bits of fabric which were beautiful on their own, but when stitched together were infinitely more beautiful and provided warmth and comfort.

Our Family Quilt is a patchwork quilt of family memories, memories which are beautiful on their own, but when "stitched" together become even more so, and provide warmth and comfort to all who share. The memory might be one of the past, or one made today. Perhaps it is a word or two, a paragraph, or a story that comes to mind when a particular person is thought of. I wanted everyone to just take a moment to share memories and photos. If all of my family members did this, then we would have a thing of beauty and warmth that will help to keep the ones we love in our memories. It will bring a sense of connection to family members who may not have the opportunity to really know each other. It will connect the past with the present, and as we continued to add new memories, the present to the future. I was hoping that we would have a "living" quilt of memories that we would continuously add to, a patch at a time. I hoped that every family member would contribute so that the Family Quilt becomes such a thing of beauty that it becomes a legacy that our descendants will one day treasure.

Over the years, participation has not been like I had hoped it would be but a few folks have added some memories and some have added photos. We have even been able to identify some of those “unknown” folks. Several family members have been able to see photos and faces that they had never seen before. I reckon that it has been somewhat of a success. I am still hoping that folks will begin to share their memories and stories more. Hmmmmm…I wonder if we can have a virtual quilting bee!

So starting the Family Quilt is one of my greatest achievements but recently I have been very happy to recognize another.

My three-year-old granddaughter Jooniebug loves to look at photos on our phones. I have quite a few old family photos on mine. She will crawl up into my lap and ask to look at pictures and we will go through the photos and I will tell her that one photo is of her great-great-great-aunt Alta. Another photo is of her great-great grandma Rachel and another is her great-great-great grandpa Joe. She has started crawling up into my lap and asking to look at her greats!

This morning, my daughter called me and asked me if we had a great-great… grandpa Joe. I told her that my great-grandpa was Joe. Then Roxanna told me that Jooniebug had drawn a picture and told her that one spot was great-great… grandpa Joe. Another was Rachel and another was a great-great… auntie Mary. I didn’t remember showing her a photo of Mary, but she does have a great-great-great aunt Mary. So I am so hoping that I have achieved instilling an interest in her family and her family history in Jooniebug. If that continues, that achievement may become my greatest!


                                            
Jooniebug's picture of some of her greats; All of the different colors tell me that at the tender age of three, she already knows that we all mutts!

Sweet Memories of My "Kennedy" Compound

 

I have trouble separating the memories of my first eight years of childhood. Nearly all memories from that time combine into an idyllic era filled with family, love, contentment, carefreeness, safety. I wish that I had the power to bestow upon every child the near-perfection of my first eight years. My later childhood was good, my life so far has been good, just not the idyllic perfection of my first eight years.

I was born in Dayton, Ohio to young, first-time parents. They had little in the way of financial security but they were rich in the amount of love they both received and gave. They were part of something special that was much bigger than themselves. Several family members of both of my parents lived in an area of Dayton within a ten-minute walk from each other.

My parents were part of an extended family in which members shared a mutualistic symbiotic relationship. The members supported each other and had each other’s backs. In later years after learning a bit about history, I would liken this to my family’s own “Kennedy” Compound, just without the fame or fortune.

When I was born, my parents lived in a little rented brown shingle-sided house at 336 Knox Avenue. Later, before my brother was born, my parents bought a little white-sided house just down the road at 320 Knox Avenue. That home at 320 was not much more than a shell of a home when they purchased it. Snow actually blew through cracks between the window and the sill into my brother’s crib the first winter we were there. Dad worked on it in his spare time until it was a beautiful and cozy little home.

                                                          Mom had just stepped on a bee.

                                                              Life at 336 Knox Avenue

If you stepped out of my family’s home at either 336 or 320  and walked in a right direction up the road, a few houses down on the right would be where Aunt Alta, Uncle Bug, their three children, my Uncle Johnnie and Granny lived.

                   A "recent" photo of Alta and Bug's Knox home.

Now Aunt Alta was really my great-aunt but she and Uncle Bug were more like grandparents to me. When Alta’s sister Rachel died, Aunt Alta and Uncle Bug had taken in my mother and her baby brother Johnnie to raise. Mom’s other five siblings ended up in children’s homes. Over the years, Aunt Alta lamented more than once that she wished that she could have taken in all seven of the siblings but she just couldn’t do it. Mom was ten and Johnnie was one or two when they moved in with Aunt Alta and Uncle Bug. Granny was Alta and Rachel’s mother so she was my great-grandmother. Everyone called her Granny, even the neighborhood kids.

                                                Granny and me.

Now, if you came out the door of our Knox home and went left down the road and then left around the corner, you could walk to the end of that road and then walk across a path worn into a grassy piece of land, and come to Maeder Avenue. The house nearly in front of you would be the home of Uncle John and Aunt Hortense’s family. John was Aunt Alta’s brother and my great-uncle by blood. He was married to Hortense who was my dad’s sister and my aunt by blood. Just to the left of Uncle John and Aunt Hortense’s home was the home of Davilee and Sherlock’s family. Davilee was Dad and Hortense’s sister so she was also my aunt. Later, Uncle Bug and Aunt Alta would move to a home on Calumet Lane and this is the home that I really associate with them.  You could stand in Uncle John’s backyard and look across a field to see the back of Aunt Alta and Uncle Bug’s home.

Uncle John and Aunt Hortense's home on Maeder Avenue.

      The home of Aunt Davilee and Uncle Sherlock on Maeder Avenue. 

So we had quite a bit of family localized in a small area. My family’s little corner of Dayton is what I would later call our “Kennedy” Compound.

While I have memories of my own home, I have just as many at the homes of my other family members. Mom tells me that before I was born, my cousin Linda, everyone called her Kookie, claimed me as her baby. She would often come to our Knox home, put me on her hip and pack me back to Aunt Alta and Uncle Bug’s house where I enjoyed the love of myriad family members. Sometimes she would take me to Uncle John and Aunt Hortense’s house where I would enjoy the company of even more family. I was like a little nomad constantly searching for another spot to land and wherever I landed, I was surrounded by loving faces.

                                             Kookie and me.

Just as I was constantly traveling between homes, others were visiting and staying with my family there on Knox Avenue. My maternal grandfather stayed with us for a short time. My aunt and her three children stayed with us briefly two or three times. Dad would drive down to Kentucky to pick up Mom’s siblings to visit us during breaks from their schools.

                                                 Granny with David, Lola's kids and me.

                                            Neighbor Kimmy, Aunt Lola's kids, David and I.

                                                                    Grandpa visiting.
 

                                Dad building a radio in Knox kitchen.

Me in front of Cedar chest made by Uncle Billy.

                                    Granny and David at 320 Knox

             Me in my bed that was in the corner of the living room.

Prince Albert cans filled with caterpillars would often be under that bed.

Birthday celebration on Knox.

                                       Uncle Ronnie visiting Knox.                        

                                    

On Thanksgiving and Christmas, my uncles, along with my male cousins would travel to one house and have a meal before continuing on to the home of another family member for another meal. They made rounds getting in as many delicious meals as possible before my uncles had to return to the children's home and school.

So I was either traveling around to see family or family was coming to Knox to see us. It was such a sweet time filled with so much family and love.

I especially recall visiting at Aunt Alta’s and Uncle Bug’s Calumet Lane home. I believe that I saw them on a nearly daily basis. I remember that Granny raised chickens and I can recall her getting a shipment of baby chicks. I can recall a cardboard box with holes dotting the top from whence a cacophony of peeps could be heard. I remember waiting in anticipation as Grandma opened that box and I recall peering down into the bottom of that box to see yellow fluff balls trying to climb over each other to get out. She would take the chicks to her chicken house and feed and water them with upside-down mason jars with special feeding and watering “lids”.

After those chicks grew up, they would lay eggs that Granny would fry for breakfast. A few unlucky ones would end up as fried chicken but at least, they didn’t end up as ordinary fried chicken; they ended up as Granny’s most delicious fried chicken!

I remember when Mary Poppins first came out, Kookie took me on an electric bus downtown to watch it at the theater. That was such an adventure! I got to ride on an electric bus. I had so often been awed when seeing those streetcars go about town tethered to the lines overhead. That was probably the first time that I had seen a movie in a theater. My family usually watched movies at the drive-in down Third Street. Those movies were special also because sometimes, there were fireworks after the show!

I recall after seeing Mary Poppins, someone had purchased me a vinyl “carpet”bag with an attached umbrella that I was convinced was just like Mary Poppins’ magical possessions. Our neighbors behind us would babysit my brother and I occasionally. They had a low overhang over their basement access. I remember plans to climb up onto that low roof to go flying off with my magical umbrella and carpetbag being thwarted by a much too observant babysitting neighbor!

I remember sitting on Aunt Alta and Uncle Bug’s front porch in the summers. Sometimes we would be waiting for Granny to use her huge butcher knife to slice open a big ripe watermelon bought from a local stand. The watermelon of my youth was the sweetest, juiciest, most delicious watermelon I have ever eaten. Maybe having fun spitting the seeds made it better…or maybe swallowing the seeds and anticipating growing your own watermelons is what made them so good!

We also sat out on the porch waiting for Dad, Uncle Bug or someone else to bring home a gallon jug of ice cold root beer from the stand up on Third Street. Everyone would hold a glass out so it could be filled with cold, delicious perfection, unmatched by any root beer to this day.

Often, Kookie and I would just sit out on the porch swing and swing. Sometimes we would just sit. Sometimes we would talk. I remember once that Kookie told me that Granny was more hers than she was mine. I asked her how that could be. She told me that Granny was her grandmother but she was my great-grandmother. Of course she was my GREAT-grandmother, Granny’s greatness was surely beyond  question! Besides, wouldn’t that mean that Kookie was just Granny’s granddaughter while I was her GREAT-granddaughter!

The porch swing in future years; Uncle Johnnie, Aunt Alta and Aunt Lola.

Aunt Alta; Granny's chickens and chicken house in background. Across the field is Uncle John and Aunt Hortenses's house.

Never too big for Granny's lap.

Calumet kitchen.

                         Uncle Bug and Granny in Calumet kitchen.             
                                 

 Uncle Olen on leave visiting Calumet.   

 Uncle Bug near Calumet garage. Home in background.

                                                  Holiday picnic.

Uncle Johnnie worked just up Calumet and across Third Street at Estridge’s Market. Kookie would often walk with me up to see Uncle Johnnie there. I was Uncle Johnnie’s tenth birthday present as we shared birthdays and we would often celebrate with cake together.

        Uncle Johnnie and I sharing our birthday with David and Granny

When we visited him at Estridge’s, he would buy me a pop, usually a Barq’s Red Crème Soda and candy. He would let me pick out a whole little paper bag full of penny candies. I guess that Kookie would hop me up on sugar and if I got too hyper she could take me home!

Uncle Johnnie also worked at a little donut shop on Third Street. I remember on the weekends, he would bring home a box full of donuts that he and his buddies had made at the shop. Those were the best donuts that I have ever eaten too! It seems that all of the flavors of my childhood make more recent flavors pale in comparison. Perhaps it is not that the watermelons, the root beer, the donuts of my youth tasted so much better but that the presence of long gone loved ones is what made them so very sweet.

So my first eight years were filled with boocoodles of family; great-grandmothers, great-aunt/grandmother, great-uncle/grandfather, great-uncle/uncle, great-aunt/aunt, uncles, aunts, cousins of every “denomination”. I was surrounded by family and seeing that family was not a rare occurrence. Many of them I was blessed to see on nearly a daily basis.

This idyllic childhood came to a rather abrupt end in the April of my eighth year. One day instead of going to visit with Aunt Alta, Uncle Bug, Granny, Cousins Kookie, Dale and Denny, and Uncle Johnnie, I was whisked over to the Cecils’ home who were Aunt Alta and Uncle Bug’s neighbors. Granny had been taken to the hospital. I did not know what was going on. I only knew that my Granny was in the hospital and I was not allowed to go see her.

I remember sitting quietly and still in a chair in the Cecils’ living room. I remember a vise clamping down on my heart and with each moment that passed, the harder became its grip on my heart. I remember the fear, the confusion… Where was my Granny? What were they doing to my Granny? Why were they keeping me away from my Granny, the angel that had been a sweet daily presence in my life?

I don’t know how long I sat there in the Cecils’ living room but eventually, someone came and took me home because Granny had died. I am not sure if I knew what dying meant. I am not sure if I cried or continued to sit quietly or maybe I went on about play? I just don’t remember that.

I do remember going to Granny’s funeral. I remember refusing to walk by her casket to see my beautiful Granny lying in a box! I wanted to be standing by my Granny as we looked down into a box of chaotic yellow fluff balls together not into a box at my still, sweet Granny!

I did not cry until they started singing “In the Sweet By-and-By’ and then my cries burst forth. Granny was so well-loved and I know that others shed quiet tears but the sounds of my eight-year-old heart breaking must have seemed like an erupting Krakatoa amongst that quiet grief. I probably added to my mother’s own grief but I could not help it. I recall saying over and over, “I want to go home! Take me home!”

For some reason, it seemed so very important that I go home. Perhaps my eight-year-old mind had thought that if I were at home, I wouldn’t have to wait until the “sweet by-and-by” to see my sweet Granny. Perhaps I imagined that Kookie would come by the house, take my hand, lead me outside, around the corner, across a path worn into a patch of grass, up by Uncle John and Aunt Hortense’s house, across a field and into the house on Calumet where I would go into the kitchen and hug my sweet angel Granny.

So April 22, 1968, was the date that my fondest memory of childhood, really a tightly woven strand of many memories, ended. Two or three months later, my family moved to a farm in the countryside a few miles outside the small town of Wartrace, Tennessee. There I had an aunt, an uncle and an older male cousin that lived a mile or two up the road.

The idyll ended in April and a few months later the “Kennedy” Compound ended…at least for me.