Afterlife

When I die, who will lose

The TV Guide, my book of cues,

Who will pay my daily dues,

Who will take away my shoes?

When I die, will you watch the news?

Will the cat remain and muse,

Will he change his meals and mews

Not to miss the evening news?

[Poem by Virginia McKinnon Mann; undated.]

Fear Of Things Falling In

Grandfather was never sure

That the bathtub was meant

To hold so much water:

He stood outside the door

And listened to the stream

Pouring in and

When it did not stop

Called out to visiting Cousin Jim,

"Don't put all that water in;

The floor might give way:

You could fall right through!"

Cousin Jim was slightly hard of

Hearing and let the water freely flow

While Papa fumed outside the door

And cursed the inside lock

And inventions such as bathtubs

While Cousin Jim enjoyed his bath

Not knowing Papa's fear

Of things falling in was deep as the well

And old as sin.

[Poem by Virginia McKinnon Mann; dated January, 1995. This is one of my favorites (along with "The Joy of Poetry Book"), because it is both comical and poignant. I left the line in the last stanza that she crossed out because it heightens that duochrome mood (to mix my metaphors atrociously).]

Predestination: Part Two

[Click here to read the first installment.]

Baptized a Presbyterian in my father's church as an infant, I fell into the category of those obligated to believe in predestination. After his early death, our mother took my brothers and myself to the Baptist Church, no more than a block from our home, the faith that she had grown up in. I like to think that proximity was not the deciding factor but sympathize with the logistical reality that having to walk halfway across town to the Presbyterian Church in pouring rain and tight shoes might have been a consideration more compelling than doctrine. By the time I was truly a Baptist, having declared myself a believer and been totally immersed, I was ready to defend my beliefs in heated discussions with teen-age peers.

None of us was particularly philosophical by nature, but the four churches (all Protestant) determined most of the small town social life. Not until the end of WWII was there an infusion of new blood and diverse religions. When two local servicemen brought home American-born women they met while training in Kansas, they were forever after introduced as "war brides."

Despite the fact that all of us were hostage to our parents' choices, we wanted to believe that we were exercising free will. The Baptist Church rejected infant baptism, insisting that one must be of the age of understanding to be saved and accepted into the church.

I was confused as to where that left me. Had baptism washed away my previous obligation to believe in predestination along with my sins? What was predestination anyway? I wanted to ask if free will and free love had anything to do with one another, but intuited that I had better stick with predestination.

To answer my question my mother recalled the afternoon a young newly-married couple came to call on her and how forever after they were her great friends. Since then I have understood in my bones what predestination means.

It was a few weeks after her inquiry to Mr. Austin as to the failed delivery of her wedding gift that we were digging in the front yard flower bed, dressed in gardening clothes, when she looked up to see John Frank Hubbard and his bride Rosalee Lee walking happily along our path as if to pay a thank-you call.

"I wonder why they're coming to see me?" Mother asked herself, brushing at her skirt and stamping her shoes. It was a warm day and neither of us wore stockings. "I didn't send them a present. I hardly know John Frank, though he's sweet as can be. Run inside and make up some lemonade."

John Frank had moved to our town to join a local business establishment and right away had joined our church. In a few months he took time off and returned a married man with his bride, a young woman from a different state, albeit one which lay only seventeen miles south. John Frank doubtless had advertised our church and town to Rosalee Lee as being cordial to such as herself, born and bred not only in another county but in the state of South Carolina where crossing the line made one eligible to buy liquor legally and to get married with no waiting period. She probably needed those assurances, not quite sure of a state whose Latin motto, Esse Quam Videri, loosely translates, "To be rather than to seem."

My mother certainly was pleased to see John Frank and Rosalee Lee, but bemused as to why John Frank had chosen her to meet his bride. So far as she had heard, the young couple had not called on other members of the congregation.

Still wondering how she came to be singled out, she welcomed and brought them into the parlor where I stood barefoot but ready, holding a tray with lemonade. I had thrown off my gardening shoes as I raced through the back porch to the kitchen.

"Make yourself at home," Mother said. "I'll just wash my hands." In a minute she was back with her hair combed, her expression composed, and her intelligence ready to make the most of this unexpected social opportunity.

As soon as we all agreed that there is nothing as cooling as lemonade on a hot day, Rosalee Lee smiled at my mother and said, "Your wedding gift is very much appreciated. We love the creamer and sugar."

John Frank beamed on his bride. "It means so much to both of us. I promised Rosalee Lee that our church members would welcome her. Yours was the very first gift we received when we got back from our honeymoon."

"I do hope the pattern will go with your other things," my mother said quickly and invited Rosalee Lee to join the women's missionary society and encouraged her to consider singing in the adult choir. Rosalee Lee thanked my mother profusely as if her sponsorship was exactly what she needed to feel truly accepted.

As I passed the lemonade in my bare feet and sat on the piano bench listening to my mother's natural sociability putting everyone at ease, I fell hopelessly in love with John Frank, so earnest and handsome, like the unknown suitor who would come from some faraway place to court me and take me away to an unknown land. In a non-technical sense, it was a kind of free love.

The very next day my mother called Mr. Tom Austin and with tact and well-chosen words informed him of his mistake, promising she would never breathe a word to anybody about the whole episode. Needless to say, he forthwith sent his delivery truck with a duplicate of her intended gift to the intended bride; and in a few days she called to schedule a second viewing.

My mother never claimed that Mr. Tom Austin apologized or even said he was sorry, but shook her head in disbelief when she put down the phone. "Poor man. He's spoiling for a fight, but I'm not looking for a black eye."

In a community where a secret unshared is no secret at all, she reaped the bounty of what she called, Mr. Austin's "inattention to detail" and thoughtfully [forewent] the pleasures of telling.

John Frank and Rosalee Lee always considered Mother a very special, welcoming friend; and she in her turn always felt a special, predestined affection for them both.

[Written by Virginia McKinnon Mann; date unknown.]

Predestination: Part One

[Although the typewritten copy of this story is undated, the events took place in Wadesboro, North Carolina when VMM was a teenager. That puts the date around 1940, give or take a few years.]

Mr. Tom Austin, the jeweler who took clocks apart and did not get the parts all back in (leaving the striking element out of ours, for instance) carried an excellent selection of wedding gifts. Although his carelessness about clock repair led one male customer to express his dissatisfaction so pointedly that both of them ended up with black eyes, Mr. Austin was unfailingly polite to the women who patronized his shop for china and crystal.

The protocol in our small North Carolina town was to select a gift from the bride's pattern and have it delivered well before the ceremony, thus allowing the bride a chance to display her gifts in her parents' home and creating a social opportunity known as "the viewing." The bride or her mother, but preferably the bride, would conduct this event, a kind of open house, for weeks before the wedding. If there were a large number of gifts, the family might give over a whole room such as what was then called the "rumpus room"; and the ping pong table would be covered with an elegant white cloth to suitably set off the gifts. The bride herself would show her appreciation by remembering the giver of every gift and by expressing as much pleasure and gratitude for the hand-embroidered pillow cases edged with tatting as for the heavy sterling serving pieces in her chosen pattern.

Imagine my mother's dismay when she went for the viewing of an old and dear friend's daughter and found that the carefully-selected cream and sugar set she had ordered several weeks before from Mr. Austin's store was not on display.

She called Mr. Austin immediately.

"We have never failed to make a delivery," he said acidly. "Of course, some brides don't get their notes written right away if at all. Remember Annie Eaton. Remember her. I got a lot of complaints on her account."

The case of Annie Eaton was well known to my mother as well as to the rest of the community. Annie was able to get off only a weekend from medical school in which to be married; and although she was of a prominent family and very well brought up, she failed to acknowledge any of the numerous gifts sent from Mr. Austin's store. Needless to say, she never intended to set foot again in her hometown. Indeed, her new husband was from some state such as Pennsylvania; and, as was to be expected, they later divorced.

Knowing Mr. Austin's reputation for testiness, my mother apologized for giving the impression that he was in any way at fault.

She patiently watched for the mail, delivered twice a day in those faraway times by Mr. Hector Bennett, a notorious card sharp, who might go so far as to stop along his route to take a hand in a front-porch game of Set Back; but such as was dispersed did not yield the expected note of thanks.

Only my mother and I ever knew the end of the sugar and creamer story. I think about it every time the question of predestination comes up.

[First installment of an undated story by Virginia McKinnon Mann. Click here for the second installment.]

We Children

When we were middle-aged children

(Our father had died young),

We lay on Grandfather's grass

(Mostly weeds cut back)

And watched for shooting stars,

Not guessing we were born right

For the best starry shower of the century:

Not much pollution then either

And no cloud cover in all of Anson County;

But knowing how fortunate we were

Puts the icing on the cake

After the last crumb is eaten.

My God, how we smacked our lips!

[Written by Virginia McKinnon Mann in December, 1993.]



[Photo via San Diego Air & Space Museum Archives.]

The Joy of Poetry Book

One of the joys of reading poems

Is starting anywhere in the Book,

Two-thirds to the end or one third

Any which-a-way:

Also, no need to preheat the oven.

[Written by Virginia McKinnon Mann in December, 1993. Merry Christmas!]

[The above does not appear to be a poetry book, although I'm not sure what it actually is. Still, I think it fits Virginia's poem, at least aesthetically. Via Miami University Libraries on Flickr.]

The Beginning

In a snapshot taken more than a decade ago, my grandmother and I pose beneath a tree, probably in the backyard of her Palo Alto home. I like this photo a lot, even though I look borderline sulky and her smile is only half-formed. Perhaps it's the soft light, and the way our bodies slump together comfortably. I remember plenty of that dark, warm sunlight from my childhood visits to my grandparents' home.

"In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness." Genesis 1:1-4, via KJV Online.

Archiving my grandmother's writing is going to be a difficult undertaking. For one thing, there's plenty of it! Even the relatively simple task of typing up the hard copies is somewhat daunting: legible handwriting doesn't run in the Mann family. (Thankfully, some of her work was produced or copied on a typewriter.) Despite these factors, the mechanics of the project don't worry me much. Rather, I am scared that I will disappoint my father and fail to properly honor my grandmother. That there will be too much of me and not enough of her. (After all, look at this first entry!)

I must constantly remind myself: Not trying is a guarantee of failure. Make the attempt.