Today I am grateful for my mom, Ida Stevens Clemens.
It's November 1st. And, it's been a rough year.
Today is my mother's birthday, and if she were alive she would be age 107.
She had a long and good life, though the early years were clouded by a pandemic, just like ours is today.
Mom was only five years old during the 1918 flu epidemic. She wrote in her journal about a smell of burnt autumn leaves that seemed to fill the air, with a haze following. Soon, people began getting sick. Two of her young brothers would die with the flu, and her mother's sister Harriett would lose three within a month.
Her father built coffins for people. Both my mom and my grandmother got down with the flu and couldn't get out of bed. When she finally felt well she leaned up on one arm to look out the window and down the hill, where she saw many caskets laying in a row. There were bodies in them, but no one was well enough to bury the dead.
In 2017 or 2018, there was a television show on one of the education channels that nearly repeated mom's experience about the flu. I contacted them and told them I had a firsthand account if they would like a copy. Yes! Little did my mom know that her rough little journal would end up on sites that can be viewed around the world.
Mom worked hard. She was the oldest of a large family of boys, and told me I didn't have to be stronger than them - just louder. I fear the boy or man who would think to get into a tussle with her.
I want to focus on something my mom taught me when I was a young girl. My parents served others for as long as I can remember. One day she told me she was going to help someone who had just had surgery, so I was to get my coat and be ready to go. (My parents never left me with anyone. I went everywhere with them.)
We arrived at a woman's house that did not look familiar to me. As we stepped inside, her home was warm and inviting, but mom headed straight back the hall to her bedroom. There laid a large black woman that I didn't know, but mom did. I believe she was a member of our church.
We positioned her and changed her sheets and fluffed her pillows. Mom combed her hair. She was experiencing some gas from the surgery, and mom gave her some ginger ale and told her to lay on her left side, for that helps to release the gas bubbles.
Then, mom told me to trim her fingernails and toenails. I hesitated. She gave me the "look". I trim everyone's nails. As a matter of fact, I trimmed 120 toenails and fingernails every Saturday night when raising my own family. When going on genealogy trips with my sisters they would all line up on the bed with their feet hanging over, just ready for me.
But, I don't think I had ever touched a black person before. It didn't matter. Mom was still giving me the "look".
So, I did. I trimmed them. Filed them. And I rubbed lotion all over her feet and legs. I could look into her face and see how good it felt to her.
Mom and I stopped for coneys and root beer at A&W on the way home, and she told me something I have carried with me to this day. She said I was never to look at someone and make a judgment call because of the color of their skin.
You better be looking at the color of their heart.
So, I am grateful for the mother I was born to so many years ago. I open my mouth, and her words come out. Recently my son told me that when he opens his mouth my words come out.
No, they are the words of generations.
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