Eighty-eight years ago, my mother was born in a converted boxcar in Kathleen, Florida while her parents were in Polk County working in the strawberry fields. The Jacksons were working to save enough money to buy their own farm in Lafayette County where they lived. She was the tenth and last child born to her parents, the fifth girl. This trip was their next to the last because they did save enough money. The rest of her childhood was lived near Mayo, Florida.
It was fitting that those of us who could, gathered to celebrate her life for a few minutes. When asked what was the most wonderful thing that had happened in her lifetime, there was a chorus from the grand kids, each claiming their birth as that most wonderful thing. Anne, of course laid claim to being the only grand daughter; Rob, to being the biggest baby. John topped them all with his assertion that he was the first and therefore the most special. As the laughter died down, she thought about the question and answered that she thought it was the change in birthing things that are available now to protect the health of mothers and children.
When she was born, there was no thought of going to a hospital to have children. When someone got sick, you did what you knew to do and prayed for the best. Her mother had been the person in the community whom people would get when there was sickness in their house. She would do what she could to pull them through. My mother said the sweetest prayers she ever heard were her mother's prayers for sick children when she did not know what to do.
When we look back on 88 years, we might think that someone would come up with computers or space travel or any number of modern additions to our lives, but I think there is a lot of wisdom to her choice. No matter how many problems we have with health care, our lives are so much easier now than in 1923. Childhood immunizations keep us from having to hear our little children racked with the horrible coughs that signify "Whooping Cough." The various measles, mumps, and chicken pox are basically things of the past. Cancer is no longer an automatic death sentence.
After lunch, mulling over her recent experience of getting a new driver's liscense, she pulled out her first one which expired in 1945. It was typed on a piece of form and on the inside was a place for offenses if you were ticketed.....no plastic; no picture.
My mother is the last of those ten children living. Her life has been a long one. She lived through World War II with her husband in the Pacific, a brother in Europe, a brother on a carrier in the Pacific, and four nephews scattered through the services. She watched her older sister die of cancer in the early fifties. She worried over nephews in the Korean War. She raised two children, helped farm, birthed a lot of calves and pigs, cooked a slew of meals, worked in tobacco, watched her children graduate from college, went back to school and got her high school diploma, celebrated the birth of each of her four grandchildren, dried a lot of tears, celebrated triumphs, shared heartaches, enjoyed her great-grandchildren, and grieved when her husband of 67 years died in 2003. She still raises the best tomatoes in the world and knows how to coax the most beautiful blooms out of roses.
I am sure that when someone has the nerve to ask her if she still drives and lives on the farm, she will give them a good hard stare out of those hazel eyes of hers and say, "Of course! I'm only 88!"
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