about that middle name
my grandmother had arthritic hands and a fat billfold full of dollar bills and pictures of her grandchildren and people i didn't know. i sometimes thought she would never be able to open the billfold because of the knots in her fingers, but she always managed. when we went to the village store together — me staring at the gizzards and the pigs feet, hoping she would not bring those home for supper, her moving across the creaking floors to gather her provisions — she sometimes bought me Chicklets. and I would down half the pack before we made the short drive back to her house.
she was taken with saying things like "my lands i pray!" and "great garden peas!", a phrase that always stopped me because my grandmother knew her peas. field and blackeyed and green (not to mention butter beans, which are not peas but have never been limas) — she and my grandfather grew them all in the garden beside their house. she taught me to shuck them out of their shells on her front porch until my fingers bled green, sitting there in the glider on a quiet afternoon. all that shucking never made me like peas, no matter the color. but there were other things she cooked that i loved.
i am named for my grandmother but am nothing like her. my father's mother, she was stoic to a fault, laughed quietly but never really giggled, my lands i pray! and she didn't know what to do with me when i cried when i looked at my mother's wedding portrait hanging on her wall. my other grandmother, whom i saw far less often, used to dance in the family room so that we were embarrassed after awhile. but she and i were more kindred spirits.
my sister, though, looks as if my father's mother spit her out, as the saying goes. pictures of them at similar ages are downright scary they look so much alike, and they share a no nonsense get-on-with-it personality. it is what it is so you do your best, and for heaven's sake, don't wallow in self-pity. it is unbecoming. great garden peas!
today is my grandmother's birthday. and before the day ends on this first day of no daylight savings time, i want to celebrate the fact of her.
hazel estelle hooks. (i'm the estelle part.) though i always hated my middle name it's growing on me. i had a friend just after college named hazel, and she was a spitfire. i wanted to be hazel instead, the part of my grandmother that must be something like the hurricane, for surely that was me. but i was estelle. estelle? the boys in my class took hold of that one in junior high calling me "ass tail", —sorry mom & dad — and so i wanted to drop it. estelle seemed like the kind of person who would swoon across chaise lounges in silken nightgowns in black and white movies.
my grandmother estelle never once swooned and only wore cotton, but her aprons were soft as butter. she kept a jar of jergens on her bedroom dresser, and sometimes when she wasn't looking, i would steal a smell.
my grandfather called her ES-tell when he referred to her in the presence of others, but he often just called her "Doc", or "Dot" when he addressed her, (maybe my hearing was bad even then, so at least that's what it sounded like to me.)
she was born on this day in 1902, to barden vance hooks and ida estelle garris in fremont, north carolina, one of five children — three girls and two boys. i don't know her birth order but i suspect she was somewhere in the middle. i only knew beulah, the older sister closest in age to her. everybody always said my father is just like her brother frank. she called her father "poppa".
my grandfather died in 1989, and a year later, knowing my grandmother's memory was leaving her, i gave her a grandmother memory book. on my infrequent visits we would sit with the book, and i learned some wonderful things about her that i never knew.
like her life's dream was to teach school. math. can you imagine? another reason we are not at all alike. that she got in trouble most for arguing with beulah (well, we are like in that way, as i used to argue with my sister.) that her mother was always worried, and that her father was happy-go-lucky (like my grandfather.) and what she loved most about her mother was "everything she did, except putting a switch to my legs." well, i'm with her on that one. all this in her words, and in my handwriting, from the grandmother book.
her favorite season was spring, and she once rode a streetcar in Wrightsville Beach, even though her family never took a vacation. her best friend? mildred sammons, who lived a couple of blocks away. her first boyfriend's name? bernard pike.
she never rode a bicycle — a fact that still amazes me — but she played volleyball at salem college (was captain of the team, which would have been about 1924.) she was the only member of her family to graduate from college, and after graduation, she rode the train to Sunbury, the little village where she would teach math in high school.
she met my grandfather there, at a picnic at cannon ferry on the chowan river, a few miles south of town. there was probably a boat ride, and in the boat, she and my grandfather may have spoken the first words of the story that would one day lead to me.
(here, her memory was clear. she wore a white dress. they ate fried chicken. and when she told her father she wanted to marry william graham byrum of sunbury, n.c., he said: "i thought i educated you to teach school." (now that sounds a little bit like my own father, come to think of it.)
i picture them, my grandfather trying to make her giggle, she trying hard not to, but smiling. he playing the player piano that was in their front hall, she thinking all that was poppycock, but enjoying it as she went on with her work. the bed they shared sits upstairs in my house, in my son's room, and sometimes i go there and lie on it, just to be close to them. is that odd?
it is unimaginable to me that when my grandmother married in her navy blue dress in her parents' home, she could no longer be a teacher. only unmarried women in 1927 could be teachers. maybe she used her math to help him in his car business, but that is a fact i will never know.
after their wedding, she and my grandfather rode the train to Washington for their honeymoon, then settled into a house that was built for her, a house that her mother-in-law told her had too many windows.i remember as a child, french doors separated her living room and dining room and i loved that. the only time she visited me in the house i've lived in for 23 years, we had just installed the same to separate our living and family rooms.
"i always thought they were a lot of trouble to wash," she told me then. of course now, i understand.
the grandmother book is filled with fill in the blanks, some of which involve my father. "I still smile when I think about the time...." and grandmama completed the sentence: the day your daddy was born, the road to suffolk (va) was under construction, and Bigdaddy (my grandfather) told the watchman he was going through, because i was having a baby."
the last entry — and there is no date — is an answer to a question about what she was strict about with my dad. "i'm sure we didn't have any rules!" she recalled, which i am certain is not accurate.
in my memory, we visited with my grandparents just about every Sunday afternoon, either at our house or theirs. and at least once a summer, i would spend a week at her house, picking the peas and shelling them, shopping with her at the village store, trying to sit still in sunday school at the methodist church across the street. eating those chicklets. taking a bath in her footed bathtub.
she died in the house she and my grandfather called home their entire married life — 62 years — surrounded by all those windows that looked out at the garden and the pecan tree in the back yard, the bluebirds and the pines in the front.
early on the september the morning we buried my grandmother, my husband drove my sister and me down country roads in the fall fog. i remember a small pond on the side of the road along our route, a lone fisherman drifting with his pole. we could see only his shadow in all that fog, but the image still sticks: my grandfather, drifting, waiting for her to get in the boat. for their own wonderful story to begin.
writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author. want to share something? all you have to do is ask me.
she was taken with saying things like "my lands i pray!" and "great garden peas!", a phrase that always stopped me because my grandmother knew her peas. field and blackeyed and green (not to mention butter beans, which are not peas but have never been limas) — she and my grandfather grew them all in the garden beside their house. she taught me to shuck them out of their shells on her front porch until my fingers bled green, sitting there in the glider on a quiet afternoon. all that shucking never made me like peas, no matter the color. but there were other things she cooked that i loved.
i am named for my grandmother but am nothing like her. my father's mother, she was stoic to a fault, laughed quietly but never really giggled, my lands i pray! and she didn't know what to do with me when i cried when i looked at my mother's wedding portrait hanging on her wall. my other grandmother, whom i saw far less often, used to dance in the family room so that we were embarrassed after awhile. but she and i were more kindred spirits.
my sister, though, looks as if my father's mother spit her out, as the saying goes. pictures of them at similar ages are downright scary they look so much alike, and they share a no nonsense get-on-with-it personality. it is what it is so you do your best, and for heaven's sake, don't wallow in self-pity. it is unbecoming. great garden peas!
today is my grandmother's birthday. and before the day ends on this first day of no daylight savings time, i want to celebrate the fact of her.
hazel estelle hooks. (i'm the estelle part.) though i always hated my middle name it's growing on me. i had a friend just after college named hazel, and she was a spitfire. i wanted to be hazel instead, the part of my grandmother that must be something like the hurricane, for surely that was me. but i was estelle. estelle? the boys in my class took hold of that one in junior high calling me "ass tail", —sorry mom & dad — and so i wanted to drop it. estelle seemed like the kind of person who would swoon across chaise lounges in silken nightgowns in black and white movies.
my grandmother estelle never once swooned and only wore cotton, but her aprons were soft as butter. she kept a jar of jergens on her bedroom dresser, and sometimes when she wasn't looking, i would steal a smell.
she was born on this day in 1902, to barden vance hooks and ida estelle garris in fremont, north carolina, one of five children — three girls and two boys. i don't know her birth order but i suspect she was somewhere in the middle. i only knew beulah, the older sister closest in age to her. everybody always said my father is just like her brother frank. she called her father "poppa".
my grandfather died in 1989, and a year later, knowing my grandmother's memory was leaving her, i gave her a grandmother memory book. on my infrequent visits we would sit with the book, and i learned some wonderful things about her that i never knew.
like her life's dream was to teach school. math. can you imagine? another reason we are not at all alike. that she got in trouble most for arguing with beulah (well, we are like in that way, as i used to argue with my sister.) that her mother was always worried, and that her father was happy-go-lucky (like my grandfather.) and what she loved most about her mother was "everything she did, except putting a switch to my legs." well, i'm with her on that one. all this in her words, and in my handwriting, from the grandmother book.
her favorite season was spring, and she once rode a streetcar in Wrightsville Beach, even though her family never took a vacation. her best friend? mildred sammons, who lived a couple of blocks away. her first boyfriend's name? bernard pike.
she never rode a bicycle — a fact that still amazes me — but she played volleyball at salem college (was captain of the team, which would have been about 1924.) she was the only member of her family to graduate from college, and after graduation, she rode the train to Sunbury, the little village where she would teach math in high school.
she met my grandfather there, at a picnic at cannon ferry on the chowan river, a few miles south of town. there was probably a boat ride, and in the boat, she and my grandfather may have spoken the first words of the story that would one day lead to me.
(here, her memory was clear. she wore a white dress. they ate fried chicken. and when she told her father she wanted to marry william graham byrum of sunbury, n.c., he said: "i thought i educated you to teach school." (now that sounds a little bit like my own father, come to think of it.)
i picture them, my grandfather trying to make her giggle, she trying hard not to, but smiling. he playing the player piano that was in their front hall, she thinking all that was poppycock, but enjoying it as she went on with her work. the bed they shared sits upstairs in my house, in my son's room, and sometimes i go there and lie on it, just to be close to them. is that odd?
it is unimaginable to me that when my grandmother married in her navy blue dress in her parents' home, she could no longer be a teacher. only unmarried women in 1927 could be teachers. maybe she used her math to help him in his car business, but that is a fact i will never know.
after their wedding, she and my grandfather rode the train to Washington for their honeymoon, then settled into a house that was built for her, a house that her mother-in-law told her had too many windows.i remember as a child, french doors separated her living room and dining room and i loved that. the only time she visited me in the house i've lived in for 23 years, we had just installed the same to separate our living and family rooms.
"i always thought they were a lot of trouble to wash," she told me then. of course now, i understand.
the grandmother book is filled with fill in the blanks, some of which involve my father. "I still smile when I think about the time...." and grandmama completed the sentence: the day your daddy was born, the road to suffolk (va) was under construction, and Bigdaddy (my grandfather) told the watchman he was going through, because i was having a baby."
the last entry — and there is no date — is an answer to a question about what she was strict about with my dad. "i'm sure we didn't have any rules!" she recalled, which i am certain is not accurate.
in my memory, we visited with my grandparents just about every Sunday afternoon, either at our house or theirs. and at least once a summer, i would spend a week at her house, picking the peas and shelling them, shopping with her at the village store, trying to sit still in sunday school at the methodist church across the street. eating those chicklets. taking a bath in her footed bathtub.
early on the september the morning we buried my grandmother, my husband drove my sister and me down country roads in the fall fog. i remember a small pond on the side of the road along our route, a lone fisherman drifting with his pole. we could see only his shadow in all that fog, but the image still sticks: my grandfather, drifting, waiting for her to get in the boat. for their own wonderful story to begin.
writemuch.blogspot is the original work of author susan byrum rountree. all written work and photography is copyright protected and can only be used with written permission of the author. want to share something? all you have to do is ask me.
susan hooks is here
but then 30 years ago today, something changed.
i woke up to a phone call. 'hello susan!' pamula shouted. 'susan hooks is here!'
susan hooks. it took me awhile for this to sink in. my sister had just had a baby. a girl. and she had named the baby after me. (and my grandmother, but still.) wow. i called pamula daily after that, wanting to know who she looked like (her mom), did she cry (not much), how it felt to hold a baby in your arms that was your own. (one day I would learn myself.) in short order i was driving my mustang from augusta,ga to greensboro,nc, where my mother and my sister had spent the week babykeeping in a little house with kelly green carpet on the family room floor.
the small bathroom in my sister's house had no vanity, as i recall. just a sink, and since there was no room to stretch out the giant baby bathing sponge, the first thing i saw on my arrival at the house was this: the two most important women my life dangling a tiny, wiry, slick-wet frame over the sink. and her eyes were WIDE open. freaked out, i would describe it. wet baby wet hands wet grandmother and mother... i was scared half to death that they would drop her.
but they didn't. i am sure she was dry, dressed and fed by the time i got to hold her myself, looking into her large blue eyes, marveling at her chunky cheeks — she looked a little like Tweety Bird — counting her toes. a baby. a real baby. my sister's baby, and somehow — because she was named for me — by default my own. we were sharing at last. and something way more important than a t-shirt.
(my sister remembers this week not just because it marked the birth of her first child, but for the fact that beety jean, who thought that kelly green carpet could use a shampoo, sent my just-days-post-partum sister to the grocery story to rent a carpet cleaner — and didn't even help her get it out of the car. or clean the carpet. she probably did help clean it...that's our beety jean!)
being good Southern women, pamula and i started out calling our new baby susan hooks, but as she grew, just 'hooks' seemed to stick. two months later i got married. my sister moved our little baby to just outside St. Louis, but we talked every day about what raising her was like.
the next spring, i had become her godmother, and so i boarded a plane for illinois and her baptism. while i was there, we went to the zoo and the Arch, watched the roaring mississippi close up. and i took a lot of pictures.
on sunday, we dressed hooks up in her finest bonnet and headed to church. no other member of my family was there (another story: my brother's daughter was christened the same day, in a town much closer to my parents, so they were there.)
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| 80s hair... what can i say? |
i will spare you more of this story, which my sister describes as the happiest and saddest day of her life... how we drove all over Illinois look for a place for lunch and ended up in a dingy pizza parlor sitting all alone — pamula, her husband, hooks and me — celebrating the very fact of this baby.
when she was two, pamula called to say hooks had said the cutest thing. 'she asked me if a cloud sleeps. isn't that so cute?' that question led this writer on a dreamy literary journey that continues today. (to celebrate my tweety bird, i have been working on do clouds sleep, the bedtime book she inspired, much of the day). hooks grew older, gained a couple of brothers, and by then i had a baby of my own.
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| hooks & her worm |
and now our little susan hooks is here and grown (though she is still little.) she looks like her mother and her great-grandmother (though she smiles much more than Hazel Estelle Hooks ever did.) and she is learning to make beety jean's caramel cake.
happy birthday, tweety bird. maybe by the time you have your own tweety bird i will finally be able to hand you your book.
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| can you tell they are kin? |
because you just never know
in march, she was caught by the fluid building in her lungs, unable to get out of bed or dress without assistance. they brought her home, found caregivers, knowing that at 93, her heart was slowing to a turtle's pace. wondered if at some point the ticker that had been ticking since the end of january 1918, would soon come to a full stop. I wrote about her then, about how worried we were for her.
but she kept on ticking, in the best john cameron swazye kind of way.
just a few days ago, we paid her a visit for our annual july 4th weekend with our 'fake family', and there she was, beaproned and standing in the kitchen making her special congealed salad which she makes every year for us. and on another day, she reached into the oven to check on her two perfectly baked lemon chess pies. she sat with us at the table as 11 of us gathered — for all 10 meals — laughing and talking, posing with her grandson, sharing a cocktail in the evening with granddaughters and friends, rocking on the porch in the heat.... sure she was tethered to her artificial breath, but still.
in our time together, we talked about how her unmarried uncle in the 1920s used to take she and her sister to town, dressed in fine feathers and spats to cover their shoes, driving them the 30 miles to the capital city, promising her a new car when she turned 16 so she could drive him instead. only he got married before her birthday, and she never got that car. she told me how much she liked my husband when she first met him 30 years ago. 'he was a good one,' she said, 'i could tell.' and don'tcha know for the most part, he has been? and he dotes on her, that he does.
as the holiday ended, she was doing this: talking into the face of an iPad, recording her voice into the heart Talking Tom Cat, laughing with her granddaughters at this new technology which was only invented when she turned 92.
that night she watched The Bachelorette. THE BACHELORETTE. i have never seen the show myself, but apparently everybody spends a lot of time in the hot tub, and the bachelor in question kicked out the prettiest one. and as the fireworks flew and boomed outside, inside her room with the tv on nana comforted the three dogs (two of them large) who cowered at her feet. nothing gets this farm girl down. not a faint ticker. and not something as newfangled as a computer the size of a good book with a crazy kind of kitty on the screen who talks back, surely not that. because there is always something newfangled appearing out there in the world and it appears that nana's ticker is ticking around to see just what turns up next.
