Miss Nellie

Tomorrow I will write about my mom but today I want to write about my grandmother. My grandmother's mother came from a very loving family with a good source of income. They owned a store. Her mother married a kind man who loved her very much. They loved their daughter, Nellie, and there lives were good until Nellie's dad became very sick and died. Nellie's mother remarried and wasn't as lucky the second time around. Her stepfather tried to rape her and Nellie's grandparents found out and gave her mom a ultimatum. She either had to lose the stepdad or her daughter had to come and live with them. Nellie's mother chose the awful stepfather over her. She went to live with her grandparents who adored her. Education was very important to her grandparents and so my grandma went to school way past the age that most kids in her town went to school. Most of the kids went to work early and their parents couldn't afford for them to continue in school when they could be bringing in money.
My grandmother loved to learn her whole life. You could walk into her house at anytime of the day and it was possible to find her hunched over her Bible and searching something out. My grandmother's town was the first place I ever heard the term Campbellite. A lady in a store said that I was a Campbellite...I was about 7 or 8 and I had no idea what she was talking about. My grandmother lived in Northwest Alabama and her family were among some of the first Campbellites in the area. The church I remember visiting as a child with my grandma was Thornhill Church of Christ...a tiny white wooden church with an outhouse and a cemetery. In the cemetery are many relatives including my great-great grandfather who was a Colonel in the Civil War. He fought for the Union. My grandmother rests in that cemetery now under a big beautiful tree. My grandmother's family gave the land the church and cemetery are on. This little church has spirit or maybe the Spirit. I was always startled as a child with their singing. They sing loud and hard and tap their feet on that old wooden floor while fanning themselves with funeral parlor fans. The men sing the lead and the women sing alto and tenor and some of the men sing bass...wow, they are lively.
My grandmother raised 9 children. They were sharecroppers who picked cotton. I read the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men and it is about that part of Alabama and the sharecroppers who lived there in the early 1930s and 40s. That was the time of my mother's childhood. I asked my mom why the people in the photographs look so sad and dirty and hardly had any clothes. The pictures of her childhood don't look nearly as poverty-stricken and I wondered why there was such a difference. She said it was because her mother was an amazing manager. She knew how to save money and how to make healthy meals and how to stretch everything so that all her children had what they needed. She made beautiful dresses out of flour sacks.
When my grandmother died I went down to Alabama for the funeral. I was standing in line at the Piggly-Wiggly and two women were in line behind me. They were talking about my grandma. One asked...Did you hear that Miss Nellie died? The other woman said...no, she did so much for our family. The other woman then said...Yeah, she always brought us food when I was little and made us clothes when we didn't have any. Not only did she take care of her family with her meager income but she also fed and clothed many people around her.
She was also the one they called when someone was sick. She was considered a healer in her community and also helped many babies make their way into this world.
I loved my grandmother but she also scared me. She had that weird Alabama accent and she was strong. When she would hug me, it was tight and she would pat my back hard. But always when we left I would tear up and I was sad to be leaving her. I saw a woman with a mind of her own and a deep relationship with her God. I hope in some ways that I am like her. I do look like her and my mother and I am glad to carry something of her into the future.

Tell me about your grandma.