Living Essentially

Nanny

I don’t mean to begin on such a somber note, but for the past few years, one of the things that I thought I wanted has also been the thing that I have dreaded the most.  Just as you all have, I have slowly watched our Nanny’s health decline, her vivacity and independence diminish. A few years ago, I was fortunate enough to be able to spend a couple of days with her while she was still living in her house in High Point. One night we stayed up really late gabbing away and the next morning we both wound up sleeping in uncharacteristically very late. I found myself praying to God while I laid in bed “Dear Lord, don’t you think this would be a good time to bring Nanny home?” She was starting to really slow down after having survived a few falls and I knew that she wouldn’t be with us much longer. Of course, the Lord’s answer was “No, not yet!” I guess He wanted her to teach me her secret for putting up fresh blueberries, because that’s exactly what we did that day. You know, those blueberries – the kind she would fold into a nice yummy syrup, bake inside her delicious dumpling pastry and serve in a nutmeg sauce. (Bet you’re hungry now!) Or maybe God wanted all of us to learn how to care for the elderly by watching Aunt Jo and my mom tenderly care for Nanny in these later years. If you really want the best quality of life for someone who is in a convalescent home, it is amazing how much you have to advocate for them. I don’t think any of us wanted our Nanny to be alone and we certainly did not want her to be uncomfortable.

Hence, the conundrum. We knew Nanny’s health was failing but at the same time I am sure we all asked God “How will any of us ever learn to live without her?” Nanny has always been our Great Connection to just about everything…A connection between the past and the present, a connection between our abundance and need to practice frugality, a connection between our faith in Jesus Christ and the practice of that faith in our everyday lives.

Our Nanny was an amazing connection to the Past and I don’t just mean that as a history teacher does. She has been our link to generations before us and a simple time that is long gone. I could sit with her for hours and hear her stories about the French family and Excelsior Plantation in Rocky Point, where Granddaddy Ormsby (who she called “Papa”) was the overseer. Do you remember her telling the story about the day of Mr. French’s funeral? It seems that Grandmother Ormsby thought that Papa should shut down the Cotton Gin that day out of respect for Mr. French. Well, the Frenchs were all the way up in Bangor, Maine and he didn’t think that anyone would care if he kept it running. Wouldn’t you know that the very hour of the funeral service that cotton gin quit working and I guess Grandmother got her wish. It was a great story, one which I never grew tired of hearing. Nanny had so many grandchildren and great-grandchildren…she couldn’t remember having told me that story and I didn’t care if I heard it again and again. By the way, did you know what she called me? “Vivian Jo Pat Karen…KIM!”

Nanny was also a great connection between those awkward teen years and growing up. In my late teens, I spent a lot of time with her and of course during those years, she had to put up with quite a few of my melodramatic tales of the woes of dating teenage boys. It always surprised me to hear her explain about her own troubles when she was my age – she could still get really animated about those boys who had done her wrong. I think she called them “rascals,” which is what those scalawags were! Thanks to my grandmother’s empathetic ear, I learned to have confidence in myself and dump each and every rascal who didn’t treat me with the appropriate amount of respect.

Our Nanny was a connection to a time when people were much more resourceful than they are today. I don’t know if it was related to living through the Great Depression or just the way she was raised, but she knew how to multipurpose or extend the life of just about anything. Do you remember that lovely dressing table in the bedroom in Rocky Point? Did you ever lift the skirt that she made to cover the table? The top of that table discretely covered her sewing machine…the one she used to make us clothes, pillows, dolls, sock puppets that looked like Lamb-chop. Speaking of socks, did Nanny ever darn your socks for you? One week while Billy and I stayed with her, she darned the heels of my athletic socks! Did you have a frayed shirt collar? She turned it for you, which meant the frayed part was on the inside so it didn’t show and you could wear that shirt for a few years more. As a kid, I remember asking myself, “why did she do that? This stuff is so cheap and we can just throw it out.”  I remember that my favorite meals at her house were the ones that she simply prepared from the leftovers out of her fridge. She heated up: leftover collards, butterbeans, turnips and rice with roast beef and gravy. Ok, the fresh cornbread she fried in the skillet was to die for. (If you’re not hungry now, you are crazy!) To be honest, Nanny’s old-fashioned acts of love and thriftiness are values that we treasure in today’s consumer-crazed society, and I hope these are values we can pass onto our kids and grandkids someday.

Nanny was an impressive walker. When I was a kid, everyone used to talk about how fast President Harry Truman walked and that even the media had trouble keeping up with him. The media should have hired Nanny! If you dared to go on a walk with her, you had to trot to keep up. One time she joined the members of our church in Texas for a good-old German-style Volksmarch. None of us could keep up with her. Sometimes her love of walking got her into a little bit of trouble. For example, she came out to visit us in 1989 while we were stationed in California. She decided we could walk the mile or two it would take for us to go from our apartment down to the beach. About a block from our destination, Nanny decided she had to go to the bathroom. She excused herself and then went to find a nice bush. She soon realized after she was done that she had just watered the 18th green at the Pebble Beach Golf Course. (Fortunately there were no golfing witnesses that we know of…) I told you she was resourceful!

On a more pious note, we all know that Nanny was our connection between our Christian faith and the practice of that faith in our daily lives. During my teen years I went to many a Wednesday night prayer meeting, Saturday night Full Gospel Fellowship Meeting and Sunday morning worship service with my grandmother. When were weren’t in meetings together, I’d be in that rocking chair by her side listening to her share some new teaching she had absorbed with her bible wide open and boy, she could go to town like a country preacher. “Vivian Jo Pat Karen…KIM!”, you remember what Paul said: Faith comes from hearing, hearing the Word of God!” or she’d recall Paul’s lesson in the eighth chapter of Romans: “It says it right here ‘But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.’” She absolutely loved any preaching that dealt with the mind, body and spirit. To be honest, I can actually hear her sing that scripture! Maybe the reason that I remember many of these scriptures so well is because I remember her singing them. She learned a lot of these scriptural songs from Brother Jim Chessom, who we all adore and give thanks for being Nanny and Granddaddy’s pastor. He also taught Nanny the “First John Four Seven and Eight” song that I remember vividly. Please sing it with me if you know it. If not, close your eyes and perhaps you will hear her sing it:
Beloved, let us love one another:

For love is of God;
and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God.
He that loveth not,  knoweth not God; for God is love.
Beloved, let us love one another,
1st John 4: 7 and 8

I also recall the time right after Granddaddy died I was sitting in her chair in Rocky Point reading her bible and I came upon a scripture from the first few verses of Isaiah 57 which I shared with her immediately: “The righteous perish, and no one takes it to heart; the devout are taken away, while no one understands. For the righteous are taken away from calamity, and they enter into peace.” We were both convinced that the Holy Spirit had indeed given us a blessing and comfort to help us cope with Granddaddy’s passing, and she would remind me of this for years to come.

Now remember that I told you that Nanny was the connection between our faith and practice. If you are old enough to remember Grandmother Ormsby than you are also old enough to remember Estelle, the woman that Nanny hired to watch her mother while she was at work at the Belk Beery Department Store. Some of us called Estelle “Toot” and I don’t remember why, but even as a child, I remembered how Nanny spoke to and treated Estelle not as “the Help” but as someone she loved and respected. In fact, I think it may have been because of her connection to Estelle, that she and Granddaddy were invited to attend services at one of the African American churches not far down the road from their house. I always thought it was so cool that they did that. It seems rather weird to mention it now, but those were the early years of desegregation in our area and Nanny was my role model for how I ought to love all my neighbors.

In all my years of growing up around Nanny, that is what I remember: To love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your mind and with all your strength means to love … to love everyone, no matter what their color or if you think they have wronged you or whatever! If you love like our Nanny loved us and like Jesus taught us to, then God will return your love “exceedingly abundantly” above all that we could ever ask or think. Thanks be to God for our Nanny and her beautiful life and example.

Knitting with a Conscience

I started knitting again a couple of summers ago after I realized there were so many great projects out there that I could complete that would show someone I really cared about them. I began by making a prayer shawl for my neighbor across the street who was going through a rough time (she was on dialysis which made her feel very cold) and one for my grandmother who is in a nursing home. Both projects were very meaningful as I found myself constantly praying for Karen and my nanny as I knitted away.

That summer I read a book called “Knitting for Peace” where I learned about Peace Fleece and that set me off on another knitting journey. Peace Fleece’s motto “A yarn company committed to helping historic enemies cooperate and prosper through trade” is a beautiful idea for a beautiful company. Their office is in a barn on a sheep and horse farm in southwestern Maine. Peter Hagerty and his wife Marty Tracy started buying wool from the Soviet Union back in 1985 with the hope that they could help diffuse the threat of nuclear war through trade. The first time I ever ordered anything from them, I talked to Peter on the phone and he had just come in from tending the sheep! I use their worsted weight (70% wool, 30% mohair), which comes in lovely colors like “Baltic Blue” and “Firebird Orange”. Their prices are extremely reasonable (currently $7.50 a hank) and I have knitted many projects with this yarn since.

Last November I was sitting in a Caribou Coffee Shop with my good friend Kathy and we fell in love with these reuseable coffee sleeves which I couldn’t resist buying! Reusable coffee sleeves — what a cool concept. Hmmm…make one from Peace Fleece? You bet I did! Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, I knitted a dozen of those suckers as gifts and I had a ball. I found a simple wishbone cable pattern for one online and this is how I varied it:

Using size 6 needles, cast on 20 stitches using a provision cast on method with waste yarn.
Row 1, 3, 7, 9 - k 20
Row 2, 4, 6, 8, 10 - k4, p12, k4
Row 5 - k4, c6b, c6f, k4

I repeated these 10 rows six times and used the Kitchener Stitch to graft the ends together.

(c6b=slip 3 sts onto cable needle, hold to back,k3 then k3 from cable ndl.)
(c6f=slip 3 sts onto cable needle, hold to front,k3 then k3 from cable ndl.)

My husband suggested that I make beer bottle cozies for people who don’t drink coffee. So I found a pattern in “Knitting with Balls” and used more Peace Fleece to make my own Cozies with a Conscience. I even started messing with team colors (Patriots and Eagles) for a little variety.

In addition to Peace Fleece, I have enjoyed looking for other yarn that helps me express my values. For example, I love to buy locally made products whenever I can, so when I found Blue Heron Yarn at Lovelyarns in Hampden (one of Baltimore’s great neighborhoods), of course I couldn’t resist! This yarn is hand-painted (in Easton on Maryland’s Eastern Shore) cotton and rayon and knits like a dream. I made a scarf (see below) with diagonal stripes to show off this gorgeous yarn!

I am currently knitting a tunic from “French Girl Knits” using Bee Sweet’s Bambino yarn (70% organic cotton/30% bamboo). The yarn is hand-dyed by South African women living in an economically depressed rural region with a 75% unemployment rate. I have never knitted using cotton yarn before and it feels wonderful, making for an awesome knitting experience.

Photos taken by Bill using his new Nikon D90 camera