The Reason Why

This blog is about my family and the journey we took to overcome adversity. The Maitland family is held together by love. Although we don't communicate as often, we know; we feel the connection. Love, faith in God, and sheer determination, keeps us searching for answers to many questions that we didn't dare ask growing up. It's about rediscovering family and creating new memories; putting to rest the times that brought hurt, and strengthening the love that has kept this family strong through it all.

The Year Nonie Died

The Year Nonie Died

     The year Nonie died, they laid her in cold storage in the hospital basement, and we waited for Uncle to come back from one of his frequent business trips. He worked with Mayflower and drove.  He was Air Force military given an option to take a desk job or retire. He traded in his pilot’s wings for a trucker’s rig. Nothing was ever second best with Uncle: the best of everything for him, from cars to houses, to food. The problem was Daddy. Nonie raised Daddy from an infant. Her only sister, (Daddy’s mother), threw him across the bed to her when he was only two weeks old, after an argument about how sister was not taking care of him. On that day, his Aunt Gracie became Nonie to him, and the only mother that he claimed till the day he died.

            Uncle Jimmy was Aunt Gracie’s son. When the boys were small, sibling rivalry was intense. Uncle resented the attention his mom lavished on her “chosen” son. Daddy had no one other than Nonie, and when she died, I can remember daddy carrying me on a trip down to the hospital morgue. Nonie was laid out in a regular bed, not a drawer. I kept asking daddy to tell Nonie to wake up. I was too young to understand why she wouldn't wake up.

Daddy said, “Gracie, Nonie’s asleep for always, but she is in heaven and she loved you.”

“Oh,” was all I could manage to get out at the time.

    All I thought about was how I would miss spending time with Nonie.  I wanted to wake her up and talk to her, but she wouldn’t wake up.... I wanted her to open her eyes and laugh again, like she used to do when she was praying. I wanted to brush her Barbara Steinwick hair, and sit under the quilting frame as she worked so intently on yet another quilt. She called them prayer quilts, because when she sewed, she prayed.  She was so sophisticated and regal; a woman with presence, and when she entered a room, she was respected without demanding respect.  Her white hair almost glowed, and it always fascinated me, until cancer took her hair away. Even the turbans couldn’t hide her glow, because it was still there, stronger than ever. Prayer has a way of marking a person. She was a woman of prayer, and she produced many many prayer quilts when she was so sick that she had to be propped up with pillows in order to continue.

            I remember sitting under the frame, and watching her push the needle through the layers of fabric to the underside ever so slightly, and then watching the needle disappear briefly to the upper side. With each stitch, she prayed for individuals. She sang angelically as if she were leading a heavenly chorus in praise. I could hear angels in her room. I never saw one for real, but as I listened to her prayers from under her latest quilt, I felt a different atmosphere sweep into that room, and when Nonie prayed and sang in the Holy Ghost, her tiredness was replaced with praise and worship. The illness that tried to bind her would melt away in fervent prayer. As her quilting speeded up, I could hardly see the needle passing over and under the fabric. It was captivating. It was an experience that I wouldn't soon forget; Nonie entertained angels, and angels entertained us. Somehow, I felt so alone, as I watched her sleeping in the hospital morgue; a delicate, immovable porcelain doll, and she had the most peaceful expression of hope on her face.
The Taker and the Taking

            When Uncle arrived four days later from California, we were finally able to have a funeral. They disturbed her sleep and shut her up in a box and closed the top! If I have to die, I don’t ever want to be closed up in such a small space, it makes me shutter every time I think about it.

        Uncle came in and as always apologized for being late to his own mother’s funeral, he had gotten tied up with business and couldn’t take the time off. It would have cost him thousands of dollars if he had left at the proper time for burying, which was four days ago. Daddy couldn’t say anything at all, he looked so tired. He just nodded his head; he had heard the story before. This was one too many times. Mama said, “It’s past time for burying, let’s go find a preacher and the undertaker.”  So it was done. 

           The funeral was conducted graveside and without a casket spray. Nonie was adamant about how  the service was to be carried out. She rehearsed it many times,  "When I die, you spread my casket with the prayer quilt that is on the frame, and don’t forget that before they lower me into the earth, each of you must go by and touch the block that bears your name. After I am covered with the earth, all of the prayer quilts (she had a baker’s dozen in the wardrobe) are to be given to Gracie; she loved them most of all. Promise me, it will be done as I request.” No one argued with Nonie, not even her true son, Uncle.  So down to the laying on of hands, we agreed with her wishes to reach beyond the grave to her for one last prayer, each one of us touching the quilt block that bore our name.

           Two weeks before she died, Nonie had prayed that she wanted her family to know Jesus. She stopped praying as if she was listening to his response. In a short while, she started to laugh. She laughed so much that I thought she would faint from lack of oxygen. She started speaking in tongues, and alternated that with laughter. It was the kind of belly laugh that makes you feel as if your insides are coming out. She must have heard from the Lord, because she looked under the frame and told me that she and the Lord had a plan for her homecoming. Her plan to keep the prayer quilts alive and doing her work, involved everyone of the people that she loved. By touching the quilt block that bore the person's name, her final prayer would have the missing element, a point of contact. Touching the block meant there'd be three people in agreement and that anything that she had asked for--salvation, provision, healing, would be accomplished according to God's word. This way, her prayers would never die, just because she died. It was ingenious, and certainly made perfect sense to everyone, but the people that she was trying to reach. They did it out of respect for her, but she had eternal reasons to have her wishes carried out. She smiled at me, and I smiled at her, and she said we gonna keep these quilts alive. She knew that even death couldn't stop her prayers. Nonie claimed the souls of every person that touched that prayer quilt at her funeral. It was Nonie in the casket, the prayer quilt as a point of contact (faith) and the person named on the quilt. That made “two or three gathered in His name" and that was sufficient to get a prayer answered.

            I didn’t think that Nonie was going to leave me so quickly, but I just couldn't help but giggle when the time came to touch my little tea rose on the quilt. Daddy tried desperately to hush me up, but to no avail. He was buried in his own grief and guilt, so he finally concentrated on touching his own block, a pair of patent leather shoes to represent the pair that his own daddy had pawned when he was only eight years old. His own daddy had pawned them for a pint of whiskey. Daddy returned from a visit, without shoes. Nonie's homecoming made an impact. In life, she was always watching over us through prayer, bent over her quilting frame. I felt sure that Nonie would always be praying for me. If I wrapped up in the prayer quilt, I could still close my eyes and hear her voice. Her legacy to us was prayer, and I never wanted to lose that.
          Daddy changed after Nonie died. Before she died, out of respect for her, he hid his beer. I figure that after she died, he didn’t have to respect her any more because he drank his beer openly forgetting that his family deserved a little respect too. Mama told us that Daddy needed to relax after working hard all day, and that drinking a can of beer is not as bad as drinking bootleg whiskey. So, every week on payday, Daddy treated himself to a pint of whiskey or whitelightenin’ depending on how much money he had made that week. Instead of relaxing him, drinking the bootleg always put Daddy in a rage. He was convinced that he saw Germans or beasts when he looked at us; which one of the two, depended on his mood before he took his first swallow. We never knew what part we would be playing in his mind. Sometimes, the weekend drinking would drag on into the week, and the recovery time would take longer still. Before he got over the last drunk, the weekend came again, and it continued.

          Sunday mornings were hard on Daddy. Stores didn’t open until 1:00 PM and many times he would run out of wine or forget where he had put his bottle. Early on Sunday mornings 2:00 - 5:00 AM, Daddy would wake us all up and get us out of bed so we could find his bottle. He always forgot where he left it.

We Hope for Spring

We Hope for Spring

Every winter, our family brought the couch and chairs into the kitchen by the fireplace. After hanging blankets at the doors we would pretend like we were smoking. We would snuggle up under the patchwork quilts and stick our heads out just long enough to exhale. We were thankful for the quilts that Nonnie had made. The winter was endless that year and I thought about the quilt that I was wrapped in and hoped that Daddy wouldn’t get any ideas about burning it. When I closed my eyes I could still hear Nonnie crying and praying over each named square, circle and triangle. I miss her so much.

            At night, the fire would glow and cinders would pop out onto the hearth. We stared at the flames for hours; I stared a Mama. Every night, without fail, she’d sit at the kitchen table and read passages from the Bible: She would say: “if we have faith as a grain of mustard seed, we can move mountains, you know. Don’t fret none, ‘cause God will provide. He is our shepherd, we shall not want, it says right here in Psalm 23.”

            With the help of Mr. Johnson, our landlord, the Lord did provide us with all the fallen limbs that we could gather from his pine grove that grew dense beyond the cornfield. There was only one problem. In order to get the wood we had to drag our wagon through the mud. Our wagon groaned under the heavy burden of firewood. Mom waited in the yard (she was too heavy) to chop the limbs into smaller pieces. Each journey down the corn rows required dogged determination, but we were cold and that settled it: We gathered every stray twig that we could find.

We found a way to make the chores less tedious by tying old blankets to left over tobacco sticks, and then, we took old belts and made harnesses so that we could carry the load on our backs. It worked much better because the wagon wheels didn’t stick. After a few days, when the limbs became scarce, Dad got a load of sawdust and scrap wood from work, and he unloaded it near the back porch. We were in heaven because it was so easy to pick through the wood. It didn’t last. The pile grew smaller with every trip to keep the fire going. As it got colder, the newspapers vanished, until we had to resort to burning old clothes and not so old clothes. We were desperate for the warmth of a home fire.
What we dreaded seeing was more snow, because it always made our chores more impossible than they were. It was only a matter of time before there wouldn't be anything else left to burn.           
   We had to open the doors because the house smoked. By the end of February every available item was ashes in the fireplace, and we were still cold. Being a mature teenager, I offered my tire swing and rope to burn. At first, daddy hesitated, but he later consented when his glass of water turned to ice after he left it on the counter for a while. “If construction workers can burn tires in big barrels to keep warm, why can’t we burn tires in the fireplace?” he tried to justify his actions to himself.

            The tire swing stuck out on the hearth about a crescent moon, and its rope twisted as the flames touched the frayed ends. The boiling glob of rubber bellowed up the chimney. We sprayed water on the treads to keep the flames down, and the stench of smoldering rubber bubbled and blopped puffs of black smoke and flames that scorched the paint underneath the mantle. We were all grateful that we hadn’t lost the mantle to the tire, and for a while we forgot all about being cold.

“Dan, what are you doing?”

“I’m gettin’ somethin’ to burn, I’m cold!”

“We don’t have anything left to burn. You’ve already burnt it all. The only thing we have left are the bed sheets and wearing clothes.”

“Well, that’s somethin’. I’m cold.”

“Why don’t you go in there and get under the quilts and rest.”

“I’m not ready to go to bed. Got some thinkin’ to do yet, fix me some coffee.”

“There, that’s a good idea, I’ll have a cup with you, and we can sit here together.”

“Fix my coffee and you go on to bed, it’s too cold for you to be up, school’s tomorrow, and I got to leave early.”

He found a ragged shirt on the couch and put it on the cinders; it flamed up for a short time then quickly died down again. “Got to get some wood.”

“Maybe it will dry up a little by tomorrow so we can get through the field.” Mom offered trying to ease his mind so he could go to sleep. “Dan, why don’t you come to bed, we’ll save what’s left to burn for in the morning.”

“Let me drink my coffee, and I’ll think about it. You go on, good night.”

Reluctantly, mama said that it was time for bed. We did have a big day at school. Mama told Daddy not to stay up too late. I saw Mama’s concerned look. She was a beautiful woman, but lately the worry lines and gray hair had really become more noticeable. Daddy slurred “Go on, asleep, I’ll keep the fires goin’.” How could she sleep knowin’ that he could end up burning the house down like he almost did the day before with the tire? 
I heard Daddy opening each dresser drawer one by one. He dumped the contents out on the floor. It didn’t matter that two sets of clothes was all that we had left, Daddy always said two sets of clothes was all we needed. One set for washing, and one set for wearing. So, all through the night we heard drawers open and close. It was late when I finally dozed off to sleep. By morning, Daddy had cleaned out all of the chests in the house and had started on the closets.

When I woke up, I could hardly wait to get ready for school! It was the day that I had been waiting for all year, Glee Club Tryouts! Why, I had even saved a brand new poor boy dress that I had worked all summer to pay for, just for today! I went to the almost empty closet, and I was in a state of shock, “It’s gone.” I looked in my mom’s closet and my sisters, and all over the floor, everywhere I knew to look and no poor boy. The unthinkable had happened.

“Mama . . . Where is my new poor boy?”

Mama looked like she had been crying all night her eyes were puffy and red, “Daddy was cold, and he burnt some old clothes. I’m so sorry, but he burnt it before I could stop him. I’m sorry.”

All I could do was stand in front of the fireplace and stare into it, as if staring into it might erase the tragedy of a missing poor-boy on my first day back to school. I was mesmerized with the fire all through breakfast, and nothing was left in it but embers. Slowly smouldering embers almost dead, and holding on to vibrant life. In that moment I had a epiphany: nothing has any true value, because in an instant it can become ashes in a fireplace. Lost forever. Showing any display of open disappointment, would serve no purpose than to hurt my mother, who already felt bad enough over the situation. Besides, it wouldn't bring back the beloved poor boy.
“Mama, It was brand new.”

“I know sweetheart, I know.”

            Soot covered the yellow wall of our kitchen, and mom sat down once again to the wobbly kitchen table to read. She found the verse, John 3:16, which says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” “We believe,” mom said, and she started to unscrew the table legs, and knew what to burn next.