Lingering Memories of Grandma

I remember my grandmother, Ruby Siler Culberson. She was born in 1903 when women viewed homemaking as their sole and sacred vocation. She taught her six children to fear God, help others and put in an honest day’s work.

She lived in a small wooden house with a tin roof that was surrounded by fields of red clay and acres of broken dreams. Her flower and vegetable gardens decorated the bleak landscape, and she tended the green plants and hydrangeas (her snowball bushes) with love. She was patient in everything she did, whether watching her grandchildren play or peeling apples for a pie.

Perhaps the most vivid memory of my grandmother is of her in the kitchen at the wood stove. Her house always smelled of wood smoke and of her freshly baked, homemade biscuits. My family sat down to a feast of sweet tea, fresh corn, fried chicken, mashed potatoes, turnip greens and sliced tomatoes.

I have very few tangible objects left from my grandmother except for one beautiful quilt. She sewed one by hand for each of her 16 grandchildren. The colorful scraps of fabric are like the bits of memories I have woven together in my mind of her rocking on the porch, rolling out biscuits and walking in her garden. Her life was so different from the one that I live today, yet we are connected like the threads of that quilt with a cord that cannot be broken.

Deana Johnson, Laurinburg, a member of Lumbee River EMC