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I heard Anita Hill interviewed yesterday. It has been twenty-five years since she and other women testified to the sexual harassment perpetrated by Clarence Thomas. Even after her testimony, Thomas was appointed to the Supreme Court by George Bush in 1991.

Anita Hill, now a Professor of Social Policy, Law and Women’s Studies at Brandeis University sees hope in the changes in the law since those dark times. “Victims brave enough to come forward and speak of their abuse empower others who have been abused.”

One bright, hot summer day in the early twenties in Wausau, Florida, my great grandmother, Minnie Clara Brock Gilmore worked in her hard-won fields alongside her daughter, Viney.

At some point during that day, she paused.

Her words must have gone something like this. “There is something I need to tell you. I don’t want you telling anyone else, but someone needs to know.”

I’m sure Viney must have stopped dead in her hoeing or picking or whatever it was she was doing. Her mother’s tone must have been frightening.

What was it that she needed to know? Maybe she stood there and wished her mother would pick someone else to tell her secret to.

But she didn’t. Her mother chose Viney.

“When I was 22 years old, my mother died. Some say my father killed her, but I don’t think that’s what happened. Soon after her death, all of my father’s equipment for casting and making his cooking stoves, all of it was stolen. My father was so overcome with grief over the death of my mother and the loss of his livelihood that he went away and died.

Soon after he died, the county sheriff seized all of our property. I was forced to make my living working on someone else’s farm. My baby sister, Eva, was kidnapped away from me while I was out working. I never saw nor heard from her again. My sister, Annie, was adopted by a kindly woman.

The family I worked for had two sons. One was very kind and good. The other was not. He took advantage of me one day in the north field. My baby girl was taken from me soon after she was born. I grieved myself nearly to death. Your father found me and helped me, and we married and had all of you. Later I found out my first-born was living down in Southport with her adopted parents.

I tell you this so that one day you might meet your sister and love her for my sake.”

 

 

(Continued from August 9)

“My mother told me a story she told me never to repeatl. But I am eighty years old, and I can’t leave this world without telling you the truth about your great-grandmother.”

Was this some sort of trick?  How had she gotten my cell phone number?

“Your great-grandmother was German. Her hair was really thin. So thin that she used to save the extra hair from her brush to thicken her bun.”

This tiny detail made me laugh, but it also made a  lump in my throat and told me she might be telling the truth. Thin hair ran on the female side of my family.

But my father’s pragmatic skepticism grew in my belly. Never trust a stranger.

“My daughter, Sandy, has done a lot of genealogy research. That’s how I found you. She’s a retired teacher from Rutherford High School. She taught math.”

I could Google the truth of that statement pretty quickly.

Still, that didn’t explain how she knew my cell phone number.

“Sandy would like to meet you.”

What harm could there be in meeting a retired math teacher from Rutherford and her mother? My husband and I had experienced so many dead ends in our search for my great-grandmother, that I tried hard not to get my hopes up.

But, I really wanted to hear that story.

I laid down my doubts and invited them over.

Sandy and her mother showed up that very afternoon.

I had a creative writing teacher once—Pulitzer Prize winner Robert Olen Butler—who chastised us if we defended “truth” in our writing by saying, “but that’s what really happened.”

“Truth,” he said, “is often more absurd than fiction. No one will believe it. Your job as a writer is not to tell the truth. Your job is to create believable fiction.”

The harrowing story Sandy and her mother told made me understand the truth of his statement.

 

Illegitimate–the stigma my sweet grandmother carried with her for her entire life. Her shame fueled my quest.

For nearly two decades, I searched for the truth about the circumstances surrounding her birth. Who was her mother? Why did she give her up for adoption?

My relatives knew nothing. Those who had been living at the time of her birth were long dead.

My husband and I searched every courthouse in the tri-county area for a clue. (This was before Ancestry.com). We leafed through crackling pages of marriage and death certificates. We waded through Spanish-moss cradled graveyards, contacted historical societies, scoured the genealogy section in the local libraries, and made numerous phone calls to relatives and friends.

Each was a new dead end.

My real great-grandmother had been washed away by the sands of time.

But one day, over a decade after my search had begun, my phone rang.

“I have some information about your great-grandmother.”

My heart pounded. How could this stranger possibly know? How did she find me?

Courting in 1915

As a mother of five children—three girls and two boys—I have sent them off in their finest to proms and dances, heard their heartfelt concerns over relationships both good and bad, and given two daughters to fine young men in marriage.

Dating rituals down here in the Florida Panhandle have dramatically changed since my grandmother was courting in 1915. For my grandmother and her friends, courtship came only after the man asked permission of the woman’s family. Once he had the family’s approval, he could court his chosen girl, but they could never be left alone. There was always a chaperone, usually an elderly aunt or family friend who tagged along to keep a close eye so that nothing “went amiss.” The thought was that in this way a man and a woman took the time to get to know each other emotionally and intellectually first before they married.

Annie Laura’s Triumph ends with the fictionalized wedding day of my grandparents. In real life, they, too, courted with a chaperone. Their marriage lasted seventy-one years.

I wonder if we might need to rethink our modern dating rituals?

You can read the fictionalized version of my grandparents’ wedding day in my novel, Annie Laura’s Triumph, published by Mercer University Press. 

 

Do you have a green thumb? I wish I did! My mother, my grandmother, and her mother before her all loved growing beautiful flowers. Who doesn’t love the sunny face of a bright, yellow sunflower? Or the surprise splash of vibrant color in the middle of the median where some wonderful state worker has planted wildflowers?

Nurtured by the almost daily afternoon showers, and the bright Florida sun, flowers are everywhere this time of year. And, in pesticide-free gardens, the bees are nearby, turning the nectar into golden honey.

My grandmother, whose wedding is celebrated in Annie Laura’s Triumph, loved trees and flowers–indeed all growing things. Mama remembers her taking Spanish moss from the woods and throwing it over the massive oaks in her front yard, hoping to achieve “tree lace” of her own.

My mother loved to take pictures of flowers. I remember when I was much younger thinking how silly she was. Now I understand. Flowers are transitory being. My mother wanted to capture beauty—preserve it. It was her way, I think, of holding a sparkle of eternity.

 

I love walking Iris, my 65 lb lab mix, even in the Panama City summertime heat, mainly because I look forward to the swim we take afterwards. I wear shorts, a tank top and Chacos.

My grandmother and great grandmother walked this area, just a couple of miles away, in 1915. They walked because they didn’t have cars, and their horse was used mainly for working the fields.What must it have been like for them, sweltering in this Florida heat in long-sleeved blouses and many layered skirts? How did they manage to survive the heat and humidity without what my little six-year old friend calls “inside air”?

While writing Annie Laura’s Triumph (set in 1915 about the life of my great-grandmother), I learned that there was a revolution of sorts in women’s fashion about that time. Fashion magazines touted a “transition to simplicity.”

What exactly did that mean? Corsets were looser, and skirts were fuller and hemmed above the ankles, “making it easier to move about,” though certainly not any cooler.

Here is a picture of my grandmother and her new baby along with several aunts. This picture was taken in Southport, Florida, 1916. It’s summertime–you can see the corn stalks growing behind them. My grandmother was 16–she wears 3/4 length sleeves, but notice that all of the older women have on long sleeves and long skirts.

I can’t imagine walking down my street in a corset covered by a long-sleeved blouse, a layer of petticoats, and a heavy cotton skirt down to my ankles, no matter how loose the hem might be! I can’t even wear sleeveless maxi dresses in the summer. Way too hot!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s mother’s nightmare, being forcibly separated from a child.

In ancient Rome, a few days after birth the child’s father was given the responsibility determining the child’s fate. Would the family keep the child, or was the child more of a liability than an asset, and would she, therefore, be exposed? (For more on this click here)

A harrowing thought, right? The mother carries the child for nine months, goes through labor and delivery, bonds with the child, all the time knowing that the child might be snatched away from her.

Move forward two millennia to Northwest Florida, 1900. A woman gives birth to a child born of rape. She has no money and no prospects. The mother believes that the only chance the child has of being fed and clothed properly is for the mother to give the child up to a family who can care for her.

That woman is my great-grandmother. And the child? My grandmother, who bore the shameful stigma of “illegitimate” for her entire life.

But my grandmother was determined to make certain that her own children were sheltered from such pain. She guarded her children’s happiness with ferocity. In her old age, my mother’s dementia robbed her of most of her memories. But she remembered the happy childhood my grandmother—her mother—gifted her with.

Out of the darkness, light.

 

And when they received it, they grumbled against the landowner, saying, “These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat.” But he replied to one of them… “Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or are you envious because I am generous?” (Matthew 20: 11-13,15)

 

I feel the indignation of the workers who have done the right thing all day and their reward is no greater than those who have only done the right thing for an hour.

But the lesson is clear: rejoice when anyone comes to know the love of Christ, regardless of how that person may have injured you or the world. Forgiving and loving as Christ forgives and loves is a life-long journey. I pray that my daily walk will teach me not only to forgive, but will allow me to rejoice in forgiveness. Only then can I know the generosity of Christ.

Surely, goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever. Psalm 23:6

My good friend looked at the little wooden sign sitting in my living room. And they lived happily ever after.

“Well,” she said, “I guess that was a lie.”

I was taken aback. “It’s not a lie,” I said.

“Seriously, Milinda, you call this happily ever after?”

Perhaps, I am naïve.

I do understand her point. We are at a place in our lives when our children have just left our safe nest, our parents are ageing, and so are we. Life is not easy. Tragedy befalls us.

But that doesn’t stop me from believing that I am living happily ever after. God never promised things would be easy. God promised he would hold my hand through my journey. And that gives me joy. That’s my happily ever after.

The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. Lamentations 3:22

“I got the blues thinking of the future, so I left off and made some marmalade. It’s amazing how it cheers one up to shred oranges and scrub the floor.” D.H. Lawrence

Feeling blue can sometimes be remedied by a small task whose conclusion offers results: cleaning a toilet, sewing a pillow, cooking a meal, preparing a lecture. It’s such a simple solution, I often ignore its truth. But the Bible reminds me that finding satisfaction in our work is a gift from God.

“That each of them may eat and drink, and find satisfaction in all their toil—this is the gift of God.” Ecclesiastes 3:13