Ellen Fair: A Story.

This is a story about my great grandmother, Ellen Fair. It's a little long for a blog post, I know, but if you read it, I think you'll understand. Her story is part of mine.

*****

No alarm needed to break the stillness of the early morning. The gentle pink light of an Alabama sunrise easing in through the sheer bedroom curtains was enough. Beside me I could feel her sliding out from under the sheets. Even at the age of ten I was not much for early mornings, but a few more moments to shake off sleepiness remained. Eyes still closed, I lay in bed pretending to be asleep while I listened to her move around the room.

*****

Papa slept in the hospital bed positioned straight across from where I lay snuggled under blankets. As soon as Mama's feet touched the floor she reached for her robe and seconds later was at his side. This was the morning routine. If he was awake I could hear her softly speak to him, washing his face, adjusting his covers, making sure he was comfortable. If his chest still rose and fell in the even rhythm of restful sleep she would slip off to get ready for the day.

When I was very young Papa had a stroke that left him unable to care for himself, so I don't remember many things about him. But the memories I do have bear the vivid color of early childhood. His five foot five, wiry frame seemed even smaller in the faded overalls, a plaid shirt and cap that was the uniform of an Alabama farmer. I loved going places with him. He'd lift me into the passenger seat of his tiny red pickup and carry me into town for groceries (and I suspect to show me off to the other old men who were inevitably sitting around talking about the things old men in small towns talk about). He, Granddaddy, Dad and I would drive out to the fields to pick watermelons - People came all the way from Tuscaloosa to the tiny town of Ralph to buy Papa's watermelons because they were the BEST - and he'd show me how to know which were ripe and which still needed time.

What I remember most was feeling that Papa must have been very wise. He had a quietness, a humbleness about him that wise people seem to have, as though they don't need to say much or push themselves into the spotlight. Although he only had a fifth grade education, Papa was one of those people everyone respected. He took care of Mama and of his kids. She never learned to drive because anywhere she needed to go Papa would take her, anything he thought she needed he would give her. That was Papa. Quiet, but faithful.

If anybody ever modeled love, it was Mama and Papa. All those years he had taken care of her and loved her the way a good man should love his wife, and she had done the same for him. So when Papa had his stroke and was confined to the bed unable to speak there was never a question of what Mama would do. If he couldn't sleep in the bed with her, he'd be in the bed next to her. She went on taking care of him like she had since the day they married. Maybe now she had to read the Bible to him instead of with him. Maybe now she had to feed him, not just cook meals for him. But this was their life. Until death took him away Mama was by his side, faithful and generous in love.

*****

It was six am now, and the phrase that prompted my sleepy eyes to open came at last, "Anner. It's time to make breakfast." She'd called me Anner since the first day she wrapped me - the oldest daughter of the oldest daughter of the oldest daughter - in the handmade baby blanket she'd sewn before I was born. If anyone else had called me by that name my feisty self would have put them in their place, but from Mama it was just comforting, another sign of being at home.

Out of bed I rolled and shuffled in my PJs and slippers into the kitchen. This was time for just me and her. Out came the White Lilly flour, buttermilk and a glass. One by one the ingredients found there way into the bowl. "That looks about right," she'd say as we poured ingredients in without measuring. "Just stir for a little bit, then let me see how it feels." To this day I have a hard time measuring because, well, that's just not how we did it. Cooking is about feeling, you know? People always say cliche things like, "It just tastes better when it's made with love" and it sounds funny, but I think once you know what love tastes like you CAN taste the difference.

While I stirred and kneaded, the squishy dough puffing up in little pockets between my fingers, the smell of bacon and sausage would begin to waft up from stove top skillets. The crackling oil, the pwoof, pwoof of dough and flour, the clatter of dishes and the scuffing of feet across linoleum were the only sounds. We didn't talk much because neither one of us had much to say, we just enjoyed being together. While the meat sizzled, I rolled dough into a quarter inch sheet with a juice glass and then pressed the open side of the glass down creating puffs of flour and perfectly shaped biscuits. She'd measure out grits while I placed the biscuits, sides touching, into an iron skillet. Into the oven they went, out came the sausage patties. As her fork clanked against the ceramic sides of the bowl she scrambled eggs in I took my flour-covered self over to start setting the table.

One by one my parents, siblings, grandparents, aunt and cousins came trickling into the kitchen from their respective rooms. Soon the tiny farmhouse would be bursting at the seams with family. Aunts, uncles, second and third cousins and anybody else who felt like a good breakfast would come wandering in the front door.

There were always more people than should have physically fit in one house, around one table. EVERYONE felt at home in MaMa's house, and everyone was welcome. She had a special gift for making people feel at home, for graciously inviting people not just into the house, but into the family and into her life. If she was on the back porch snapping beans, it just felt right to sit up there with her and do the same.

Usually we went to Alabama to celebrate Thanksgiving. Some things about that holiday just lend themselves to big family gatherings and large Southern-style meals. I secretly love Thanksgiving just a little bit more than everyone else because my birthday also happens to fall within a couple days of the holiday. Being in Alabama meant celebrating not one, but two "holidays" with a house full of family. It meant football games and food and Christmas movies and hours spent wandering the farm on adventures with the cousins. It meant watching Uncle Bobby pop his fake teeth out and let the dog "clean" them before he popped them back in. It meant flipping Uncle Lawrence's golf-cart as many times as possible while off-roading in it, climbing giant magnolia trees and creating huge sand slides in the sand pit we found just before you come to the swamp. But really, more than anything, it meant being surrounded by people who loved you. I used to think everyone came to Mama's house because that's just what we all did that time of year. It wasn't until years later that I realized everyone came because of Mama.

**********

After Papa died Mama started to age more quickly. Her life had been about taking care of her family, and there were fewer people around who needed to be cared for. Eventually it was Mama's turn to have someone care for her. My grandmother is the oldest in her family, and much of the time Mama stayed with her. Her mind seemed to have reeled back twenty years to a time when Papa was well and she was raising my second cousin. Time after time we would find her in the kitchen trying to cook for Bobby Jr. She worried constantly about how different family members were doing and grew frustrated that she could do nothing for them.

At Thanksgiving the family would still all go to Alabama if Mama could make the trip, but nothing was ever the same. The little white farmhouse had new tenants so we all had to stay at different places and it was difficult to all be together as we had been.

The summer of my eighth grade year I went on my first mission trip. One week in to the two-week trip Mom called to tell me that Mama had died. I would not be able to attend the funeral and I was devastated.

I sat on my bed that day, thinking back over the time we had spent together. For years I'd received multiple cards a year from her. Cards that let me know she loved me and was thinking of me. Always the card said all the words and usually she would write "To Anna" at the top, sometimes "love Mama" at the bottom and often nothing more. I wondered if I still had any of them. In my hands I held my first Bible, the one she had given me. We'd had something special even though neither of us had ever voiced it to the other. It wasn't as though we had talked often or spent much time together other than Thanksgivings. But it had been spoken in the quiet of those early mornings when time was ours and words weren't needed. My heart broke as I mourned the loss I couldn't explain.

Years afterward I still felt that loss and it would rise to the surface unbidden once in a while. Not being able to attend her funeral left something in my life unresolved. For a couple years our family tried to do Thanksgiving together, but something intangible was missing and we all felt it. Things would never be the same and eventually as we all got older and people got families of their own we gave up trying to pretend that they would and developed new traditions instead. I began to understand the powerful role one person can play in uniting others.

One particular day when I was in college and Thanksgiving was on the horizon I began to feel again that sense of unresolved loss. A few weeks earlier my Grandmother had found Mama's Bible and told me she'd left it to me. It was such a precious gift to read through the years worth of notes she had written in the margins of those worn pages, and I began to realize the impression she had made in my childhood. But something was still nagging at my heart. I'd never gotten to say goodbye. As I sat pondering this, my mother came in with the mail. A letter had come for me from my great uncle back in Alabama. Inside was a note and an old, yellowing envelope. His note read, "Found this while going through some of Mother's things. It's addressed to you. Love, Uncle Lawrence." I opened the envelope to find a card titled "When I'm Gone." Below it in blue script was a poem and prayer about releasing the life of those we love back into God's hands and moving forward in our own. At the very top, above the title, in the cursive handwriting I had seen scrawled on so many cards throughout the years was written "To Anna." That was all. There was nothing more. But nothing more was needed. Somehow she knew. She had quietly and intentionally spoken into my life all those years. She had chosen to demonstrate a special love toward me, and she knew that eventually I would recognize it, anticipated that it would be hard for me when she left, so even in preparing for the end of her life she was thinking of me. Why me? I don't try to answer questions that have no answer.

For the first time since she died I began to see how she had lived, not as confined to a farmhouse and tied down by a family, but blessed with peace and the freedom to love others selflessly. I was only one person of so many that had been impacted by her quiet life.

*****

My personality could not be more different from Mama's, but I have always wanted to be like her. I can't imagine living my entire life in one place without even being able to drive myself somewhere. It's tempting to think she never really "experienced life" or that she was being held back in some way. But she lived in a way that many of us miss out on, and she still lives through each and every one of her family members who could tell you more and better stories of her love than I can.

The journey we have is so very different. Her world was small and mine seems overwhelmingly large. But if I can give even half as much of myself to others as she gave, if I can be half so selfless, patient, generous and full of grace and have even a fraction of the servant's heart that she had then maybe I will have accomplished something real. Ellen Fair taught me by example that life is about people. Warmth and openness emanated from who she was and it welcomed people into life, promised them safety, showed them the meaning of home. When I grow up, I want to be like her.


Anna Ellen Gervasi