I remember her standing over the old, white wood stove with the water warmer and the biscuit warmers. I remember her wiping her forehead with the apron. Mountain kitchens get hot in the summer, and when there are up to three meals cooked each day, they are usually warm. I remember crawling in behind the stove in cold weather, sometimes reading funny books or books from the library. Knowing that Mama’s baby boy Jack was going to get something good off of that old stove.
She was the best cook in the world, I thought. I know now she had to get tired of it, but I never heard her complain about it. My job was kindling and stove wood in the wood box. Mama could hear me breathe. I would try to sneak a wooden kitchen match out of the matchbox holder on the wall, and she could hear the rattle a quarter-mile away. I would roll me a rabbit baccer cigarette or corn silk, and she could smell it a half-mile away.
She could wash me better with her thumb than I could with a washrag. She insisted my hair be combed and my clothes ironed and neat and that I stayed clean. Even though we walked to church sometimes and there were a million rocks to throw. If I misbehaved in church (every service), she would get that little hangy-down part under my arm above my elbow between her thumb and forefinger and twist it. Some thought I was getting “in the spirit.” I must have cut a thousand switches for Mom. She never got tired of switching me, either. She ironed my blue jeans, bedsheets, and all that. I got sick of being so clean. If I heard her say this once, “Wash them rusty feet before you get in that clean bed,” I heard it all summer.
She loved water and soap, and I only loved the creek water, minus the soap. I remember how she looked at me with softness in her eyes. And sometimes, she looked at me like that right after she wore me out with a switch. She could tell when I was up to something before I even knew it; yet, she told folks I was her baby boy, while she was cleaning the sides of my mouth with her thumb or digging in my ears at “places I missed.”
I was Mama’s baby boy, and I didn’t really realize it until many years later…and I loved every minute of it. She was a mountain woman with a remarkable story of survival and really educating herself through books. She loved me, I was her baby, she was my Mama, and I miss her.