Writing about events from 30 years back and remembering details requires some tricks. Journals, scrapbooks, and a slide library are key. But other things carry memories. A pottery pencil holder on the desk, a copper plate from my days at the University of Zambia, and even the handmade curtains bring back moments and emotions.
When young, newly returned South, arrogant me first met Betty, I quickly put her in a box with older ladies I’d known. That box included a permed church organist, my friend’s aunt who wouldn’t let children in her house but still kept vinyl on all the furniture, and a bible school teacher who sent me home for using sinful language. Durn her.
The Zoo & Garden had volunteers every Tuesday. They did physical work, but they also went to political meetings where influential folks I didn’t know voted on our Garden budgets. They were emissaries. Betty started out shoveling compost with the crew, but soon switched to library work. She had soft, frail hands, pale skin, and practical but polished nails.
Library work suited her thin frame, gray pants and pastel blouse better. When we gave out volunteer t-shirts, Betty said she was delighted, “How Beautiful! Look at that flower design! Did you draw it?” I never ever saw her in a t-shirt. Women like Betty didn’t wear t-shirts. She’d married into and lived a life for a powerful, respected commander at the Fort.
At first, we didn’t interact much. I couldn’t see any connection between the ladies in that box and a young, usually dirty, rule-challenging, outspoken gay guy.
I lived in a once-abandoned wreck of a house that faced Rosewood Drive, squeezed between Hardee’s and the Beverage Mart. The backyard was an impenetrable patch of pine trees tangled with wrist-thick wisteria vines and bamboo. Through it, I could hear the shooting range and sometimes reveille from Fort Jackson. Didn’t need to get any closer to folks of that mindset. But Betty figured out that the thicket connected us. Her perfectly maintained brick ranch backed up to my tangled lot.
She needed someone to do some yard work. I needed some extra income. A few hot afternoons of that, and soon, she asked me to stay for supper. Then she introduced me to her family. Her blouses nor her perm ever changed. Her pale, wrinkled hands worked but never seemed dirty. How did she garden with a simple diamond wedding ring on? Why did she want to tell me stories while we dined? But she knew we needed to understand each other. Slowly, surprisingly, we became family. I was like the gay-son she never had. She was my in-town Mom.
When I started dating a young journalist, Betty invited him to supper. Throughout her life as a military wife, she’d hosted thousands of young soldiers at this table. I’m pretty sure she had never asked them the questions she asked us. Mom questions; she was making sure I’d made the right choice. Patrick and I bought a house that had one bedroom walled with nine windows. We dreamed of huge Roman shades. Betty sewed them by hand.
Those shades surround me thirty years later.
Over the course of writing this book, journals, photo albums, and even long talks with her daughters helped me confirm details. But those Roman shades, a bit tattered now, make me feel her love. The sunlight changes the patterns on them as shadows fall from a craggy, thorny Mayapple tree. I planted it as a seedling. Now it towers and casts shadows on the creamy fabric. Embossed into the fabric is a pattern, a floral print of rotund Bourbon roses. It never occurred to me til now, but I’m pretty sure Betty had a blouse of the same fabric.
Surely a steel magnolia.
Looking forward to the book!