The Age of Wisdom

Grandmomma could tell if it was going to rain by the leaves on the trees.

She came to live with my Grandparents toward the end of her life and in the early stages of mine. A kind soul gave our family a wise matriarch, quietly crocheting in her chair and we loved her for all she had already done.

I interviewed Grandmomma for a third grade report to be written about the oldest member of my family. She was born in 1912 and spoke of the first President that she could remember being Woodrow Wilson. Her memory included the days of World War I, the Macedonia Community which was purchased by the state and is now a part of Pennyrile Forest State Resort Park and the love of family.

Her father Sephus Bennett was a deacon at the Macedonia Christian Church and her faith was strong through all her years. She was one of nine children and she gave birth and reared ten. My Papaw was her oldest son.

Grandmomma ran a farm and a house taking good care of her children as well as her Grandparents-in-law during the years of the depression. Her wisdom has been included in many of Papaw's poems and anecdotes as well as his book Cradle of Dreams .

Things that were most interesting to me were stories of her resourcefulness. I can remember her explaining to family members what hillsides to find Ginseng plants growing. Or where to search for Quail Eggs a delicacy native to our region. Papaw often spoke of her lowering a quilting frame from the ceiling when relatives were around in his early days. The frame would be lowered right in front of the fire so the heat from it would be contained where the ladies worked. She quilted so many beautiful blankets that so many of my family members have enjoyed and shared over the years.

I have heard Papaw say that Grandmomma would heat stones in the fire and wrap them in quilts to take for warmth in the floorboards of automobiles that had not yet been equipped with heating systems by their manufactures. She had a lot of solutions to common obstacles. Canning and preserving food, working her garden, her geese and chickens, and of course her flowers are all things that I have heard that she was talented with.

But to me she was very talented in ways of making you feel important. She was good at hugs and she smiled and laughed a lot when her family drew near. Maybe that was her trick to longevity, regardless of the fact that many illnesses plagued her last years.

She lived to lose two children, one in a house fire at a very young age and another in the 1980s to cancer. A sadness that was never far from her mind. But she seemed to maintain an inner strength and faith that sustained her through her more than eighty years. She was a woman that life had given many challenges but with every challenge she seemed to thrive and pass it by to see brighter days.

Her name was Emma Ophelia Bennett Stallins, and she was my Dad's Grandmother. She lived to see so much over the course of her life and it makes me wonder what my generation will live on to experience. Things that may not even seem possible to us now, that will occur. Things that we will grow to accept and understand. Things we will endure and experience. Things that will make up the stories of our lives. Will we be up to the task as she and other members of her generation were? Will we continue to find ways to evolve and adapt to this changing world? And if we are not ready, we have learned nothing from these wise and adaptable examples.

I can see Grandmomma in silent prayer, a memory, a prayer she didn't think anyone would notice. I wonder who she was praying for? One of her many family members I am sure and maybe that is what kept her going. Her birthday would have been around this time and I send this blog out into the world wide web as if to offer some gratitude for her example, for her being, and for her love. To spark the thought of Great Grandparents in your mind. To assist you in revisiting a memory of the people that are so special in our lives.