FAMILY -- NURTURING MOTHER BACK TO HEALTH

RESTORATION

It goes without saying that our grandparents had been unhappy when our mother eloped with a handsome, itinerant widower/preacher who had a large brood of children of his own. It certainly hadn't helped that he was not of their staunch Methodist faith and had introduced her to a foreign, radical, pentecostal way of worship. It was difficult for her to seek shelter back in her parents' home and to relinquish some degree of her independence in the rearing of her four girls. But the malaria had taken its toll, and she had no other choice but to return there. Our Aunt Nina, her older sister, and Uncle George became her caretakers as she recovered her health; the two sisters remained uniquely dedicated to each other for all their lives both living into their 90s.  

And so, we lived with our grandparents for some two-and-a-half years in Pickens, South Carolina in the Mount Bethel Methodist Church community where we attended church.  It was a quite wonderful time for us children.  There were many aunts and uncles and cousins by the dozens who alternately made our lives wonderful and miserable.  They delighted in teasing and playing tricks on us.  

Grandpa had a huge old tom turkey who loved to strut his stuff in the backyard.  He owned the whole of the outdoors, getting along pretty well with the rest of the family but, for whatever reason, not me.  Whenever I stepped off the back porch, the chase was on and didn't end until I was chased back onto the porch and escaped with my life into the house.  This provided much laughter at my expense and there was no empathy forthcoming.

The love our large, extended family lavished on us was immense. A gospel singing family, they educated us in music and laughter that would stay with us for a lifetime. They taught us how to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off and get going again when life gave us a tumble. We were well-served with their teachinigs.

CUTAWAY - TRIBUTE TO A LIFE WELL LIVED

SISTER, DEAREST SISTER

She gave her heart away today,
She'd given all she could.
Simply slipped into eternal sleep,
And God said, "This is good."

She was beautiful to the end,
Who'd want it any other way?
Why live, when beauty would be no more,

And suffering would have its say.

Tears seem useless, with a life fulfilled;
God spoke the final word.

Let us not grieve because she's gone,

She went to heaven in God's will.

So now the sisters, minus one
Must forge ahead and find their way.
God has spoken, and death has come;
Life continues, and God holds sway.

For life, for joy, for deeds well done,
We thank you, God, all three as one;
For the loving years we had as sisters,

We grieve not now, but we'll surely miss her.

In tribute to my beloved sister, Earlene, by Estelle Jenkins, August 18, 2011

STORM CLOUDS GATHER

Where does one begin to share his or her life?  In our family, so many people had such a great impact; it is hard to know where to begin.  So, I’ll just jump ahead a bit so that you will know why we arrived at where and who we are as a family.

My father and mother were evangelists who frequently traveled between upstate South Carolina and Florida in the Lake Okeechobee area where, during the winter months, they would work for farmers in the bean fields.  It was on one of their returns to South Carolina, while traveling through the low state area, that my father contracted malaria and died, leaving my mother and four small daughters stranded on the road.  The youngest was six months old.

We were transported in the hearse, which came for my father, to my grandparents' home in Pickens where we lived for some two years in the Mount Bethel Methodist Church community.

So, my stories will share with you the hardships, as well as the joys, of growing up in a house full of girls.

ESTELLE'S BLOG RE-LAUNCH

Today I share my thoughts on what I believe to be the only salvation for the United States - a return to the sacredness of marriage and the responsible rearing and nurturing of children under a Biblical worldview!

Our family has been wonderfully blessed to have a rich heritage of Christian upbringing supported by conservative values and little gray area in our beliefs. We are independent thinkers, fun-loving individuals who make our mistakes and learn from them. In this forum I will in the days ahead introduce to you various members of our family and share some of the joys as well as a bit of humor that we had as children, in becoming parents, grandparents and great grandparents, also welcoming newly blended families into ours. Our family circle is large, multi-ethnic and we share a mutual respect for ethnic diversity and points of view.

It is our hope that you will laugh with us, cry with us and allow us to be an inspiration to your family in these, America's most difficult and demanding times. I invite you to share in our stories and offer yours as we all tread the waters of fear and cynicism for the days that lie ahead of us.

This is the first day of our journey together! Let's make it fun.

FAMILY -- PLAYING THE DAY AWAY

The Benjamin home, we called this place. A large pasture provided new and exciting places to explore and occasionally would turn up a treasured item with which to play. A favorite one, I recall, was an old discarded wood stove. We worked hard to drag it from a good distance away into our playhouse area that we had “built” with rocks and whatever else we could find.

It was at this home that we received one of our most favorite pets -- a goat. Our half-brother who visited with us from time to time gave it to us. In the mornings, the goat would go under the house and butt his head against the floor to wake us up. We would go out and feed him, then would play the day away chasing, and being chased.

A large ditch ran the length of the front of this house and beside it stood a tree that, in the fall, would shower down its leaves of yellow and red. It was our chore to rake the leaves from the yard into the ditch. This “chore” provided play for hours on end.

THE CHILDREN AND THE TREE

The scruffiest tree one might ever see,
It stood just inside of the fence.
Its leaves fluttered down and caused Mother to frown
As the pile became quite immense.

Taking wing without sound, the leaves covered the ground
'til the ground became yellow and red;
Then out came the brooms and, swept into a mound,
The leaves made a wonderful bed.

To the ditch the leaves went, then the children, intent
Taking turns, they ran and they jumped.
They tossed and they tumbled, they giggled and rumbled,
One might say the children were pumped.

The leaves became scattered, but little it mattered
Their laughter sent waves of pure joy.
And Mother was pleased to bask in the breeze
While the children played happily sans toys.

O, where did it go, the time and the place
Where children could make their own fun?
Plant a tree, if you please, and give children release
To play in fresh air and the sun.

In our world, play was what you could make of it, and play we did!

In our world, play was what you could make of it, and play we did!

March 16, 2011 – CUTAWAY – HOW TIME SLIPS AWAY

How could this be?  Two years I’ve been away.  What happened?

The last two years have been interesting, to say the least.  In the interim I have had two total knee replacements, have enjoyed some (forced) quiet time, done some studying and, in general, life has moved at a slowed pace.  My surgeries and recuperation have greatly improved my mobility and I have now resumed a near normal lifestyle. 

Being quiet is not a bad thing.

Our family has grown by three great-grands, two boys and a girl, and we’re expecting a third girl in a few days. 

We anxiously watch the daily news as we follow the events in Japan where we have a granddaughter living through the nightmare of the mammoth earthquake and tsunami.  She and her Navy husband are finishing out a tour of duty there, soon to be returned stateside.  How we wish that had happened sooner.  So far, she is fine although she is quite anxious as the aftershocks continue to come.

Spring has come to Florida and the plants are flourishing.  Azaleas, dogwoods and Bradford pear trees have exploded with pink and white color to awaken our senses after the long winter chill.   We experienced the coldest winter on record, I believe, certainly since we came here from South Carolina in ‘71.  Hard to believe we’ve spent over half our lives here and yet still feel so very close to SC.  Great family and great friends never grow distant.  God is good!

So as I begin anew to open my life experiences up to you, I trust that something I might share will lend encouragement and inspiration to your life.  

FAMILY -- IN TEACHING AND LEARNING

At the Benjamin home we began to take our places as children of purpose. Our mother was the dearest person in the world to us and even at our tender age we were sensitive to her needs and learned parental respect for her. But we were, after all, children.

Mother had now achieved a level of financial stability that allowed her to purchase our first pieces of new furniture, a sofa and chair that I recall as a very pretty rose color. We were working in the cotton field and I can't recall how or when the items arrived at our home but they were left sitting on the front porch. However it came to be, we found them there and, being children, began to have a heyday climbing all over them, jumping up and down on them – in essence, having a ball. The party was to be short lived.

We saw her coming, in no particular hurry but slowly and patiently making her way across the field toward the house. She carried in her hand the dreaded hickory switch -- which on this occasion was from a tender cotton plant -- and when she arrived delivered it on the three in turn quite deftly. Her point was well made and three pairs of skinny legs told the tale. Lesson learned.

Our mother never failed to discipline us when discipline was required. It was always swift, just and thereby infrequent. Her method of parenting her children was to teach, and we learned early on that our best choice of discipline would be self-discipline.

Our mother demanded, earned and received our respect for as long as she lived. We will never forget her or the lessons she taught us.

CUTAWAY – FAMILY IN SEPARATION

In 1971 my husband was transferred by his employer to Florida from Greenville, South Carolina. We spent all that summer preparing to leave our families. Beginning in April, Tommy would catch a plane each Sunday afternoon and spend the workweek on the job, all the time searching for a new home for us. Then on Friday evening he would return home for the weekend.

Back in South Carolina I was taking care of our four children and attempting to sell our home there. From April until July, this activity went on with no success. Then on a Sunday afternoon in July, a weekend that Tommy did not get to come home, we had a visit from a young couple to see our house. There was no question in my mind that they would return. The very same weekend, down in Florida, things were happening. On our Sunday afternoon telephone conversation, Tommy said to me "I've found the only house that I would buy for you, sight unseen, because I know you'd love it." Excited, I told him, "Well guess what! This afternoon a couple came to look at our house and I'm positive they'll buy it. They did, and we did.

A couple of weeks later I flew down to Florida to see the house. Tommy was right. It was perfect. And in the front yard, a humongous magnolia tree shaded the whole front yard from the curb to the front steps. Later we made a return trip with all the children and they were equally pleased. In September we relocated our family to Florida and never looked back. We had the perfect house and the perfect tree. We were at home.

A few short years later as progress was being made in the local infrastructure, the telephone company came through our neighborhood and laid an underground cable down the side of our street. We would later learn that a main root of our magnificent magnolia had been disturbed and it began to fail. For ten years Tommy babied, nurtured and cajoled the tree to survive. It stood proudly as long as it could but finally the time came when safety became a major concern and the tree had to come down. God is so good. Not only did he provide shade for the hot Florida summer sun but also a touch of nostalgia to nurture our family during a time of separation from our family.

FAMILY – God takes care of His own.

FAMILY – IN THE TWINKLING OF AN EYE

Our home adjoined the property of the Benjamin family who owned and operated a dairy farm and in this time period a dairy farm provided a quite well-to-do lifestyle for its owners. The family home sat on a slight hill surrounded by wonderful trees and plants spread out over the well-kept grounds. Two that I recall quite vividly were a tremendous magnolia tree and what we knew as a snowball bush. Both rendered glorious white blooms that gave off lovely fragrances.

As children we spent many happy hours playing in and around the dairy and the big white house. It was quite exciting to bounce in and out of the milking barns as the cows were being coaxed to relieve their heavy load of the day. Frequently we three younger ones were allowed to observe as our older sister shared the milking chores.

To this day my most favorite of all trees is the magnolia. Not so for my husband who, upon our relocation to Florida spent untold hours caring for our very own tremendous and beautiful magnolia that finally succumbed to damage done by workmen laying underground telephone cable. Only in my mind's eye have I seen another snowball bush.

FAMILY – CONSIDER THE LILIES!

FOR THESE I AM THANKFUL

On this the eve of Thanksgiving Day 2009 I pause to consider the blessings that have come to me through Family: My devoted and loving husband of 58 years, my own four children, their spouses and our grandchildren (all 12 of them plus one great-grand) along with their spouses – each through his or her own special goodness bringing joy to my life; My mother who gave everything she had, every ounce of energy of her very being, to her four girls; Her parents -- our wonderful grandparents – who extended themselves to keep us under their wings, nurturing us as their very own; Her siblings – our aunts and uncles – who cared for us, taught us, and allowed us to share their space in the family home; Her nieces and nephews – our cousins – with whom we laughed and played and shared their homes, their food, their toys and their parents. The many pastors who blessed our lives as the only "father" we ever knew; Our extended family, the church and Christian friends who have held our family up in actions and in prayer through both good and less good times of my life.

As I observe and contemplate the brokenness of families through sin and wrong choices made in these chaotic times, an explosion of thankfulness arises in my heart for these who helped to mold my thoughts and beliefs to keep my life on solid ground. COME YE THANKFUL PEOPLE, COME! RAISE A SONG FOR WHAT GOD'S DONE!

FAMILY – FINDING JOY IN UNEXPECTED PLACES

It was from this home that I have my first recollection of joining Mother and my sisters in picking cotton. Across the dirt road from the home was the cotton field spread out as far as little eyes could see. Big eyes could see more clearly and distinctly, keeping an eye on the task at hand but also checking back at the house where children might be at work or play – mostly the latter. Early in the mornings we would suit up in our bonnets and sling over our shoulder our little cotton picking bags Grandma had made for us and cross the road into the field for the day of work. A sheet would be spread on the ground between the rows to catch our pickings and we would frequently return to it to empty our little bags. We would pick and empty – pick and empty; that's how our day would go. When little hands and feet grew tired we sisters would refresh ourselves by sitting on the sheet and making beautiful hair-dos, tightly winding cotton boles around a stick to form lovely white curls, arranging them into head shapes and laying them out on the sheet for all to see. At the end of the day the sheet would be gathered up and taken to the scales back at the tenant farmer's house for weighing in. Each day's pickings were tallied and credited to Mother's account to pay the rent and provide for our needs. FAMILY – CONSIDER IT ALL JOY

FAMILY – NEW EXCURSIONS, NEW PLEASURES

A new home in the country provided new horizons, new venues and new places to explore. Of course living in the country provides wide-open spaces where children can run and play without the slightest need for supervision or structured entertainment. A favorite place at this home was the surrounding pasture where we spent many happy hours exploring and dragging up rocks and old discards of other families who had come and gone, using anything we could find to build our houses. Building houses was a favorite pastime for us. We would line them out with rocks and would build tables and chairs and other items of "furniture". Then, of course, the visitations would begin as we would visit back and forth to share the news and the gossip of the day. In the front yard of this home (the Benjamin house we called it) was a tree that provided many wonderful, beautifully colored leaves in the fall to roll and jump and tussle. I have no recollection of what kind of tree it was but the leaves were big and made a wonderfully soft pile when swept up with the straw broom. I can still see within my mind my sisters and me playing in the leaves we had piled high as we completed our chore of sweeping the front yard. Chores were so much more fun when they ended with playtime! FAMILY – TOGETHER IN WORK AND IN PLAY

CUTAWAY - INDEPENDENCE DAY AND FAMILY INTERDEPENDENCE

We've experienced over the past week a very special time of family togetherness. My own family consists of my husband and me, our three sons and one daughter. Our four children have blessed us with nine granddaughters, three grandsons and one great granddaughter. Quite a brood and oh so wonderful and fun. All but our daughter were home for the Fourth and the commemorative day turned into a week of celebration culminating in our 58th wedding anniversary. What a special time it was! Our number one son has three daughters; our second five daughters and one granddaughter; our daughter has two sons and our youngest son a son and daughter. Each is unique and special in his or her own way and contributes much to the joy we share as a family. The time we get to spend together is infrequent – our second son with his family live in Ohio; our daughter and her two sons in Miami; all the rest of the family live in Jacksonville, Florida. When we all get together it's quite loud and boisterous to say the least! Such was the time we shared over the past week. The Fourth of July fireworks provided beauty and excitement but paled at the excitement we shared as family. Life is short, is full of twists and turns that sometimes challenge our emotions, our energies and even our faith but God gives us family to love and receive love; to caress and to cover; to pray for and to pray with; to guide and protect with all that we have. FAMILY – INTERDEPENDENT AND PRECIOUS!

CUTAWAY – FAMILY, IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH

I hope you've missed me! Of late I've had to take a health break to focus attention on some issues that, quite frankly, I could no longer ignore. While not life threatening they certainly have meant life adjusting and my doctor quite aptly calls them the ravages of aging! So I've been engrossed in some extensive physical and aqua therapy seeking relief from a bummed out knee – the result of a foot broken several years ago and a resulting altered gait. But as has been my way over the years, when life's lemons come I look around to find a way to make a sweet mix of lemonade. Taking time out to heal a torn meniscus gave me opportunity to participate in a most joyous occasion in the life of our family – the marriage of my oldest sister whom by now you must surely know is very special and dear to me. On a visit at New Year's this year we were introduced to the man who would soon attempt to fill the shoes of a dearly loved brother-in-law. Could this happen – ever? It could, and it did. He fits in the family like a well-worn old shoe, very comfortable and soothing to the touch. A May date was soon set and the activities began. It surely was to be the wedding of the century! There was no way I would miss this event. Over the next couple of months it became more than apparent that I could not travel from Florida to South Carolina – not by ground or air. Brokenhearted though we were, she and I had a blessed time of sharing – she making the plans, allowing me to give input, doing what I love to do. She gave me a program outline and I gave back the finished copy for the printer; she gave me the tune and I gave back the words for her song. Shortly after the honeymoon the happy couple returned to visit. What a time we had – sharing the pictures, the video, shopping for her new home, cooking with my family – just being family! Life is so short; God is so generous! FAMILY –IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH!

FAMILY – PRAYER AVAILETH MUCH

This perhaps is the home from which come my most vivid early childhood memories. I really don't know why, but this home seemed to leave a special place in my heart. Again, it was just an old country farmhouse but I treasure the good times we had there. I believe it was during this period that our mother began to long for the freedom she had experienced with our father. While our grandparents and all of our mother's family was strong in their religious faith and steeped in the Methodist religion and its traditions, my mother had experienced a different, more evangelical worship style in my father's Pentecostal faith. In fact she too had been ordained a minister in what was then the Church of God, later to become the Church of God of Prophecy. From time to time, not frequently, a family would come and get all of us and take us to church in the City, as Grandpa would refer to it and thus we became reintroduced into the evangelical way of worship. My earliest memories include those of my "twenty-something" year old mother every night openly on her knees in fervent prayer in the bedroom we all shared. Her faith was lived out in every facet of her life and served her and her family very well in storms and in Sonshine.

FAMILY – RESPONSIBILITY EXPECTED AND ACCEPTED

Because our mother always had to work we three sisters learned at an early age to take care of each other and the home. At the time we moved into our first home I was five, my second sister seven and the oldest nine years old and we each had our assigned chores. My mother and my oldest sister would spend the day picking cotton. My second sister and I had the dishwashing and housecleaning chores. Water was heated on the stove and the dishpan was set up on the kitchen table. I would sit on the side of the table and wash as my sister dried and put away. Over the next few years we would move several times, inching toward complete independence from our grandparents. Independent relationship? Yes. Broken relationship? Never. To this day our aunts, uncles and cousins continue to be very much a part of our lives and our love for each other. Our next home would be a slight step up as it afforded greater opportunity for our livelihood. Again my mother would work in the cotton field, but this landowner also had a dairy where my oldest sister could work and help out. This set the pattern for our entire lives -- my oldest sister building that helper/caretaker bond with my mother.

FAMILY – DISCIPLINE SURE AND EFFECTIVE

Our mother, much like her father, was a strong disciplinarian. She seldom had to speak twice to get our attention; never issued empty threats. Patient and just as she was, if discipline was needed, and deserved, you could be sure it would come. Once, on a warm spring day as we played in the yard, Mother sat with Grandma and a couple of aunts on the back porch engaged in pleasant conversation and laughter. Mother told me to do some chore and audaciously I spoke up and said No, I won't do it. I knew those words should never have left my mouth and I headed around the house as fast as I could go. In a flash she had hit the ground and was right behind me but I was an excellent runner and escaped into the back door and took refuge under a bed. She patiently allowed me to stay there. But the time came there was reckoning. When the older children arrived home from school later in the day, I foolishly allowed my uncle to lure me from under the bed promising candy. Lesson learned. On those very infrequent occasions when our mother was forced to administer corporal punishment, it was done with a keen little hickory switch. Often as not we would be the one sent to fetch it for her and then to suffer the indignity of the sting. The lessons learned from our mother's switchings would last a long time in our memories and the bad behaviors would seldom be repeated.

FAMILY – AT WORK AND AT PLAY

Although we were now in a home of our own, we were not emotionally removed from the home or the rearing of our grandparents. They were still close by and we spent much of our time with them. Two of my mother's siblings were in our age range and we grew up more as siblings than aunt and uncle and our grandparents continued to treat us as one family.

An event that occurred routinely in our lives was "washday" when my mother and my aunts would gather up the clothes to be washed and we would head out with the cousins to spend the day at the "pond" in the middle of the woods. This was somewhat of a "community wash house" I suppose as there was a big black iron pot set up where a fire would be built for heating water and boiling the clothes. The pot was surrounded by a large area of ground that had been cleared from many a footprint having worked on it.

Of course it wasn't the work that went on on washday that attracted us children. It was the huge trees that bore "Tarzan-like" vines that we took turns swinging over and dropping into the pond as we played the day away while the wash was being done. Before returning home we would have a nice bath with Grandma's homemade soap and don a fresh set of clothes that had been washed and dried at the pond in the woods!

FAMILY - CHRISTMAS REMEMBERED

It was in this home that we had our biggest ever Christmas – between the four of us receiving 17 dolls. There was also a "scooter" and a "rocky horse." I remember taking the scooter down the road for a ride in an early morning fog where you could barely see your hand in front of your face, but I knew the way well to a favorite aunt and uncle's house across and down the dirt road from us. I traversed the trip very well and returned to check out the wooden rocky horse. Being energized from the scooter ride, I hopped on the horse, held onto its head and swung it into high gear for my ride. The ride turned out to be a short one and I was devastated as I beheaded the precious rocky horse. This memory of the rocky horse stirred in my soul when on a recent tour through our favorite thrift store there it sat – a sturdy "pony horse" that had been lovingly, I'm sure, handcrafted by some grandfather for some beloved grandchild. We brought it home and it sat on the garage floor for some time. When we learned we were to become first time great grandparents, off it went to Ohio to adorn the nursery of a precious baby girl!

FAMILY – IN SICKNESS AND IN HEALTH

I suppose life in our first home was pretty mundane; I don't have a lot of stored memories from there. One special memory I do have of this home was a room just off the front porch that was jam-packed with newsprint and Sears Roebuck catalogs – not to be confused with the "outhouse" which also had its stock of "print". Those catalogs provided unlimited hours of play as we cut from the pages our favorite images and they became our "paper dolls", as much a part of our lives as is today's generation's "Barbies"! It was in this home that red measles broke out in the family and, of course being the puny, sickly kid that I was, red measles hit me hard with its accompanying dangerously high fevers, heavy recurring nosebleeds and matted eyes rendering me blind on wakeup. It was a special time of family caring and concern as my aunts and my sisters would hover, sponging my burning body and bathing my eyes so that I could open them and see. It was during this period of time that our oldest sister would forever become the caregiver of our little family. She was the glue that held our mother together; the safe haven that we ran to; the stalwart one that we always looked to for the final word on any issue! It is thus today.