“Take some more tea,” the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.
“I’ve had nothing yet,” Alice replied in an offended tone, “so I can’t take more.”
“You mean you can’t take less,” said the Hatter: “it’s very easy to take more than nothing.”
“Nobody asked your opinion,” said Alice.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Today, I unwrapped ten cups of my mother’s tea cup collection. The cups had been tucked away in wadded newspaper and in a cardboard box in our attic for nine years. In total there are eighteen vintage cups with saucers. Of these, eight favorites reside in my dining room corner cabinet. The remaining ten will soon be with my daughters.

In comparison to my husband who has collections of quarters, stamps, antique tools, and wooden toys, I am not a collector. I am a closet stuffer, an under-the-bed hider, and a procrastinator. I overbook everyday of my life. My home looks neat, but look out when you open a closet door. A gorilla might come bursting out just because I had planned to deal with it later.

Understand me here. I would have never, on my own volition, collected tea cups — except for my mother and Mother’s Day gifts.

Just before each Mother’s Day, our father would take my brothers and me to a local department store where we would purchase a gift.  Our mother had started collecting bone china and porcelain tea cups in the 1940’s, so Dad’s shopping excursion was easy as long as we cooperated with his enthusiasm for Mom’s collection.

Memory, or the lack thereof, requires a little imaginative arithmetic. We have eighteen cups. My parents had three children. Our mother died in 1954 when I was 12, when one brother was sixteen and the other brother was eleven. It’s possible that for six years we each selected a cup for her on Mother’s Day; however, my older brother remembers our buying her the tea cups together one at a time.

I recall standing on tiptoe to see over a glass case while a sales lady lifted cups down for us to view. Dad managed to create for us an air of magical anticipation and awe. We were to look only with our eyes.

My brothers and I could be rambunctious. One of our favorite activities was to careen in wagons down our steep driveway into the garage and fly through the basement until we coasted out an exit door into an adjoining alley. We climbed trees, rode bikes, played football in the street, and built forts. Bath time was a major scrubbing event.

But the tea cups — these were for our gentle mother, who loved flowers, music, and art; for our mother whose eyes would flood when we disappointed her, whose devotion in the kitchen and the laundry had not escaped our attention. Our mother, who salved our oozing poison ivy eruptions, who taught us not to put our elbows on the table but allowed us to read surreptitiously at the table, who protected us from our father’s unpredictable temper, and who advocated for us at school. Our mother, whose day rose and fell for us. Our quiet mother, who would rest from her chores by sitting at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and looking out through a bougainvillea draped window.

And so, out of respect for and with recognition of her motherly ways, for a short spell we behaved. We chose a favorite pattern, had the tea cup and saucer wrapped, and carefully carried our gift home to her.

I unwrapped more than tea cups today. Had our mother imagined she might visit the scene in the Royal Albert pattern “Silver Birch”? Had she wished to serve a friend tea from her Gladstone china cup with its laurel blossom motif? Did she hope to have a tea party when life quieted?

In our innocence, we children could never have foreseen the endowment embedded in our gifts. To a seven-year-old, childhood is forever and adulthood is something that happens to grown ups. How could I perceive the faraway day when I would write my daughters about the tea cup collection and say, “Please make a space for them in your life, on a shelf somewhere…out of love for me and respect for the grandmother who would have doted on you had she lived.”

Born into the Great Depression, Herb’s first years testify to the tension between need and charity. Farm families in Kansas suffered.  Drought desiccated crops. Herb never went hungry but recalls repeated meals of steamed wheat and lard gravy. Surely his mother awoke each day aware of scarcity and hunger.

The family farm sat along US 50 and across from the Cottonwood River and the Atchison,Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway. In the thirties itinerant men rode the railways, some seeking work, some escaping arrest, all of them hungry.

Strangers would walk up the lane to the Simmons’ back door and offer to work for food. Since there was little to offer in work, Anna Simmons would dip into the family’s meal pot and hand a bowl of beans or stew or steamed wheat through the door to a grateful, hungry man.

In chapter 20 of Steinbeck’s novel Grapes of Wrath, the Joad family sets up in Hooverville in Southern California.  Ma Joad feeds her family inside their tent away from the hungry stares of starving children drawn to the family’s campsite by the smell of cooked beans. Imagine her dilemma of conscience, the tension between personal and community responsibility, the feeding of her own people and the sharing with others.  She cannot bear not sharing.  After ladling out food to her family of six, she tells the gathering crowd of hungry children to go get some bowls.  Her act of charity is sacrificial, stark, and poignant.

I don’t know about you, but if my children were hungry and the larder low, I’d think twice before handing out food to a ragged but polite stranger at my back door or shorting my family to feed the children of others.   But what could I say?  “I’m sorry” wouldn’t  ring true.  I’d be lying; dishonesty with a lack of charity would only compound my dilemma. “I’m out of food; we are starving too” wouldn’t  exactly be honest either.  Could I bring myself to say, “I’m so afraid my children will starve, I’m willing to risk your starvation for their sakes.”?

Afraid!  Afraid to love, afraid to trust, afraid of giving, afraid of loss. Fear is the great isolator of people, an infection in the soul, the poison to charity, the muddy sludge in our communities.

We don’t have to have food shortages to experience guarded behaviors and a lack of charity.  Conservative social behavior can be uncharitable.

New neighbors move in next door while we check out their Acura MDX, Honda Accord, two children, and a fluffy dog.  Work men awaken us at 7am with their hammering.  “Mexican” painters go in and  out of the driveway.  The new neighbors are strangers with unknown histories.

We are busy.  We have azaleas to move, an antique car to repair, furniture to deliver to a son.  We have a business. We have social obligations.  We’ve been  entertaining out of town guests for two weeks and will be leaving for the Cape next week.

Still we go next door and introduce ourselves.  The new neighbors have names.  They are friendly, and they look haggard. The painters are behind schedule.  The moving van will arrive in two days.  The family has been going back and forth between hotel and house.  The only place to sit is on the floor or hearth.

We could walk away; we’d done our part — the introductions.  “Let us know if we can help” is not a commitment, not a sincere offer.  Too vague.

Then we say,”Would you like to borrow our vacuum?”  Our new neighbor smiles and gushes with gratitude, which fuels our imagination.  We have a playhouse once enjoyed by our now grown children.  We say, “Your children will love our playhouse out back.” And more:  “Your parents must stay in our guest suite when they come.” And finally, inspired by the possibilities we say, “You will be so tired the night before moving day, please have supper with us.  We want so much to visit with you….Help yourself to any pots and pans you might need….Here are some paper plates and cups.  Take these strawberries with you…”

We tell our maid to prepare the guest suite.  We buy Stouffer’s frozen lasagne and salad in a bag.  We pop popcorn, set out Brie and crackers, and pull cookies from the freezer.  We select a nice wine from the cellar. We allow the fluffy white dog in the guest suite.  We give our new neighbors a key to our home.

Because we could not honestly turn away.  We could not say, “We are too busy to care.”  It just isn’t who we want to be.

But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him?  1 John 3:17-18

Note:  This post was inspired by two situations: family poverty during the thirties and the generosity of neighbors when a daughter and son-in-law moved to Atlanta.  Although I exercise creative license with some details, the events are essentially true, especially the kind generosity of next door neighbors in Atlanta.  The story of Anna Simmons’ generosity during The Great Depression is part of family lore and matches all that I knew about her.  

My maternal grandmother didn’t  stop from chores to tell stories.  I followed her to the chicken coop, to the garden, to the kitchen, to the well pump and the barn; watched her heat water, mow grass, wash clothes, separate cream, knead bread, and pluck chickens.  She was always showing me, her city grand-daughter, how to do something and why.

The hens frightened me.  They could suddenly fluff and flap their wings and charge at a little girl sent to gather eggs.  “Those hens won’t hurt you.” Terrified, I’d stick my hand under the irritable hens, grab some eggs, back slowly out of the coop, and run to the house.

In my California home, peas came from a Del Monte can.  At Grandma J’s place, peas hung from staked vines in long rows.  Grandma J expected me to pick them.  With only half a bowl picked, I’d say.  “I’m through.  This is enough.”  Grandma J would dip some water for me from the white enameled bucket beside the sink, walk me back to the garden, and pick with me.   Wouldn’t it be easier to pick now in the morning than later in the afternoon heat?  And, Didn’t I love her creamed peas?

At noon during the wheat harvest, Grandma J fed a ravenous crowd made up of neighbors and relatives.  From cellar shelves came jellies, cherries, pickles, corn, peas, beans, beets, and tomatoes; from storage barrels and baskets came potatoes and onions.  Her fried chicken was the result of a bloody and efficient drama: headless chickens running around the yard and odoriferous plucking on the side porch. Chicken parts dusted with flour crackled in hot lard in iron skillets atop a stove heated with corn cobs. The savory chicken disappeared as fast as Grandma could fork it onto platters.

After the blessing, with everyone seated, Grandma J disappeared into the hot kitchen to convey platters of chicken, loaves of home made bread, pitchers of fresh milk, bowls of cream peas, whipped potatoes, and cream corn, and plates of cherry pie slices.   Her face glistened with perspiration. Her women helpers stirred, ladled, poured, carried, and cleared; they then ate after the men returned to the fields, their conversations spilling useful family gossip.

From the well came cool drinking water; from a cistern, bath water.  We shared a common dipper without fears of germs.  At night Grandma J heated bath water on the stove, then poured steaming pots of water into the tub.  Alternating first turns, my brothers and I shared common bath water.  After my parents bathed in another round of steaming cistern water, my grandparents bathed.

Cats were not allowed in the house, but when my family visited, someone broke the rule and brought newborn kittens with their momma in a box to my grandparents’ bedroom.  “Don’t touch those kittens.  They’re too young and might die,” admonished Grandma J. Listening for Grandma’s footsteps, I’d sit beside her treadle sewing machine and stroke a soft kitten with one finger.

During one winter interlude around a wood stove while skeining yarn,  Grandma J told me she’d come to Kansas as a small child in a covered wagon and had lived in a sod house with a dirt floor.  Snakes sometimes wriggled out of the sod walls. She vividly recalled when her father had killed a poisonous snake. I imagined her in a homemade feed sack dress, her eyes wide with fear and her father attacking the snake with a hoe.

On her bedroom dresser was a metallic silver blue music box with a lid. The box wasn’t actually a box since it was round like an upside down bowl.  When I twisted the top of the “box”, it played “Fleur de Lis”.   A young man who had lived with the family and hired himself out for food and shelter during the Great Depression had given the music box to Grandma J when he left the farm.  She treasured his gift and only allowed me to play it once a day.  “If you play it too much, you will wear it out,” she’d say.

When my mother died in 1955, Grandma J flew out to California from Nebraska and stayed three weeks. She cooked, she cleaned, she drove us around.  I asked, “How do you do it? You lost your husband, your son-in-law, your daughter-in-law, and now your daughter.”  Her answer:  “You have to keep on, no matter what.”  I wanted her to hug me and comfort me, but she wanted to leave a living impression.

When I was sixteen,  Grandma J allowed me behind the wheel of her new Ford sedan to practice driving on dusty country roads.  When I was in college, she took the train to visit me in Oregon.  She slept in my roommate’s bed and ate with us in the common dining room.  She attended classes with me and did needle work while I studied.

No philosopher, she wrote me every month about practical activities — caring for my cousins, going shopping, attending a quilting party, making meals for a sick friend, and visiting relatives —  until age and memory loss overtook her. Every grandchild has a story of her taking them out to eat or to a miniature golf course, about reunions and picnics, and about her straight forward, no nonsense approach with a carful of kids.

When she retired from farming and caring for her widowed son’s children, she moved to town and became a postmistress. Independent and intelligent with numbers, she had effectively managed the family farm with her son’s help after my grandfather died in 1954.

In 1984 she died when I was 32.  She finished her last years in assisted living unable to recall her children’s names when they visited.  Born in 1894, she had lived nearly 90 years through homesteading, Prohibition, the Great Depression, WWI and II, the Korean War, the Cold War, and the Vietnam War.  She had witnessed the transformation of the telephone, electricity, and television;  experienced the transition from horses to tractors, and trains to jets; benefitted from antibiotics, painless surgery, and vaccinations.

After her death her daughters laid out on a table many of her personal possessions, from which each family member in a hierarchal rotation could choose two things. The music box, tarnished from oxidation, sat unnoticeably among items of obvious value.  I chose the music box, which now sits on my dresser.  I play it once a year on my mother’s birthday.

The family had set aside for me an oil painting of the farmstead that I’d done as a mother’s day gift for Grandma J when I was 22. The painting now hangs in my study, the view reminding me of new mow hay, naps on the sleeping porch, the windmill’s ticking, cows bawling, bread baking, and softball games played on the front lawn.

These objects, the music box and the painting, remind me of the invaluable intangibles my mother’s mother left me: perseverance, responsibility, forbearance, devotion, and faith.  I learned from her how love was work, that life was a long journey, and fulfillment came as we worked together.  Being gentle but firm with people does work.  Gossip can be harmful or helpful, depending on how we use information.  Helping others is the best gift. Viking double ovens and All Clad pots and pans are not essentials for a delicious meal and a satisfying life.

And — to keep on going, no matter what.

When You think it can’t be done, think again.

A recent visit with a friend reminded me of when I faced a period of financial and emotional uncertainty so burdensome I often woke in the night in tears.  I’d bundle up in a blanket and step out onto the deck and stare into the night until a prayer came to me.

Prayers can be elusive.  We can feel a gnawing need, absent of words.  Our thoughts can be so jumbled, our feelings so overwhelming, we can’t navigate them.

The story is simple. I was separated then divorced, with three teenagers at home and later one daughter, then eventually two daughters, away at college.  Each month I faced mortgage, utility, car, and grocery bills.  A high school teacher, I worked long hours, taught night courses at the university, and took graduate classes.

Someone had given me a gratitude journal, which I tried to fill in at night before sleeping.  Often exhausted, I’d write things like “I’m grateful for being tired” or “Thank God, I won’t have trouble sleeping tonight.” Discouraged, I’d write, “My hand can hold this pen.”   Driving to work I’d feel encouraged because I had been given another day, had helpful, devoted children, a job, and energy.  This cycle of energy expense and renewal played out for six years.

I was not alone.  At the time 60% of all households were led by single mothers.  They too experienced discrimination when applying for credit cards, auto insurance, and jobs.  A potential employer for a prestigious state position asked me how I would manage since I had teenagers at home and no husband.  When I asked an agent why my auto insurance premiums had increased, he said because I was divorced, so I switched to another agency. My applications for a credit card were denied until the NEA offered me a credit card.  

When the dryer broke, I hung wet clothes on lines strung tree to tree.  In the summer we used air conditioning sparingly only at night.  During the day we hung out under a huge walnut tree or went to the library.  We used cars primarily for business.  Every dime counted.  My children worked — paper routes, retail, food service — whatever it took to put gas in the car, go on a date, buy clothes, get to school and work and sometimes help Mom pay for a vacation.

My son would hang about while I put together the monthly menu and budget. “Are we going to be okay, Mom?”  He wouldn’t relax until I’d paid every bill.  He committed himself to getting straight A’s and a full ride to college.  When I would insist that he go to bed and rest, he’d say, “I’m going to make sure you won’t have to struggle like you do to send the girls to college.”

Indeed, I was never alone.  As I was driving down a familiar street near campus one late afternoon, on the way to yet another night class, and dining on a sandwich between home and a parking lot,  I suddenly felt a voice — sonorous and authoritative — say, “I told you, you will never be alone.  I will always be with you.”  Suddenly I was awash in reassurance and confidence. I felt lighter.  Even the light around me, in the trees and on the road, changed.

The children’s father fulfilled his responsibilities at some sacrifice for himself, for which we will always be grateful.  Whenever the children questioned my judgement, he backed me up one hundred percent.

My father believed in me.  When I said I wasn’t sure I was strong enough, he said, “Just do it.”  When I said I needed to increase my salary, he advised, “Take graduate courses.  The time will quickly pass.”

When I wavered, my step-mother provided practical advice.  She cared for me when I came home from surgery.  She said, “You must eat meat and vegetables and fruit. You must maintain your energy”  and “The children need to see you are strong.”

Kind and patient, my brothers and sisters-in-law stuck with me without questioning my choices.  One brother paid for travel, another called frequently.  A sister-in-law sold me a lawn mower at a give-away price.

My parents paid for a daughter’s braces.  My father sent a daughter to musical festivals.  A friend loaned me the cost of graduate tuition. Another friend covered a year of piano lessons.  One friend called every evening for a year to give me ten minutes of stress release.  A male friend taught me how to change oil and change a tire.   When I was recovering from surgery, three friends took turns staying with me and helped with the children.

I learned how to do taxes, repair wires on a stove, fix fluorescent lights, repair faucets and toilets, and service a lawnmower.  I learned how to be alone with myself and not be lonely. We need to know we are all an essential somebody, despite trials and troubles.  We need to accept that the opposite of fear is love; how we can be stripped of every familiar and comfortable accoutrement and still love and be.

To visit me today in the same home with its mortgage now paid, to see me comfortably wrapped in relative security and snuggled next to my husband of twenty-one years, to talk with our thriving grand-children, you would hardly guess at the depths of discouragement and level of courage I once experienced.  I forget it myself from time to time.  I call it the dark ages, as if it were behind me, which it can never be since it helped mold us and undergirds this family today.

Bundled up in a blanket, I might still step out onto the deck into the night and stare into space and wait for a prayer to come to me.  I do so with a conviction and faith borne from raw experience. If nothing comes, I just try again later, and then later, and then later.  Something will come of it, just like when I write these posts without knowing really where beginning will lead.