The Front Porch Swing
I went by my mom's grave and placed some flowers for her birthday and Mother's Day. I had promised to place flowers there because she loved it when I brought her flowers. Today's blog is another flower placed in her honor as we close another chapter in the book of life.
Mother’s Day reminds us of
the great sacrifice that a mother makes for her children. I remember when daddy moved us to Beloit , Illinois . Momma never adjusted to the North. It was too cold in the winter and Southern
hospitality did not exist. She insisted
that we move back to “Sweet Home
Alabama .” Staying up there was a sacrifice she did not
want to make.
Momma was not your TV sitcom mommas
like June Cleaver of Leave it to Beaver,
but she did act comical like Lucile Ball on I
Love Lucy. She loved working
outdoors. We spend most of our time
outside washing clothes in a ringer washer with a set of number three
washtubs. Most people had automatic
washing machines inside or in an outside building. Momma heated water on the stove and we
carried outside in buckets and poured it in the washing machine tub. She sacrificed convenience to wash our
clothes.
Momma was a
disciplinarian. Her favorite saying was,
“Go cut me a switch.” Her preferred
“rods of discipline” were black cherry and plum. If you think plums are sweet, you should
taste them when they sting your naked back and legs. They ain’t so sweet then. She sacrificed black cherries and plums to
correct us.
Momma would switch us several
times a day. She was not quick on the
draw and was longsuffering. She warned
us many times before actually executing judgment on us. We knew she was serious when she would call
us by our full name. If she said Bobby
Earl Hopper, I had crossed the point of no return.
On one particular occasion,
my brother and I had been fighting all morning.
You know important issues such as I was older, and he was younger. Momma had gone as far and to call me by first
and middle name. I was on thin ice.
Suddenly, the mailman
delivered the mail. We loved getting the
mail. It was a treat to get the Sears or Spiegel catalogs. Momma
called them wish books. On this stop,
the mailman left a Hot Rod
magazine. I had gotten a free
subscription from selling magazines for the school. Momma said we could not afford magazine
subscriptions. If they were not free, we
did not get them.
My brother and I were in
peace and harmony as we sat on the front porch swing and looked at all the cars
in Hot Rod. We called a ceasefire in our battle and were
united by hot rods.
Daddy had not secured the
swing very safe to the porch. He had
brought some rough oak four by fours home from work. The kind truckers use for stacking so that a
forklift can remove cargo. He had laid
them across the rafters and wrapped the chain of the swing around them.
My brother and I swung back
and forth, back and forth, and back and forth.
With the quickness of a streak of lightning, one four by fours worked
off the rafter and fell across my back and across my brother’s head. I was much taller than he was, and he took the
brunt of the lick. The chain wrapped
around the four by four hit him on the head.
He screamed, and blood went flying.
As I tried to get the four by
four off us, momma came through the front door with a big switch and flogged
me. She yelled, “I told you to stop
hurting your brother.” I was trying to
stop my brother’s bleeding head, which appeared to momma that I was beating him
up. My brother was pleading for me, but
momma had turned deaf with anger.
We could not convince momma
of what happened, and my brother and I laugh about it now. I did not deserve the whipping that
time. Overall, I did not get as many as
I deserved. I thank God I had a momma
who loved me enough to discipline me. I
always believed that momma would not kill me when she disciplined me. She sacrificed too much for me to beat me to
death.
My son, hear the instruction of thy father, and
forsake not the law of thy mother: For
they shall be an ornament of grace unto thy head, and chains about thy neck (Proverbs 1:8-9 KJV).
No comments:
Post a Comment