Summer’s End

9/5/11 After the blistering days of July and August, today’s 70ish temps are not only welcome but hopefully glimmers of fall temps to come. As Labor Day is the unofficial last day of summer, I’ve decided to celebrate with the childhood memory of blackberry cobbler and hand-cranked ice cream. Mother would use the last of the summer wild blackberries picked by us from thickets, along roadsides ----literally a “sticky” endeavor. If you’ve never picked, you haven’t experienced the joy of the stick from those thorny barbs which grow alongside those sweet berries. It makes the flavor of the cobbler all the sweeter. As S. Sifton states, “The taste is summer condensed and intensified.” (NYTimes, D7, 8/31/11)

Of course, we added homemade ice cream atop our steamy bowls of cobbler. It, too, was all the better for the cream was a family “labor.” From the going to Ellis ice plant, just a few streets east of the train depot, in the Alstheler and Payne Livestock truck (that wasn’t really a truck) to pick up our block of ice, brought out to the platform by a guy wielding those big tongs, to the chipping, with the wooden handle ice pick, of the ice for the ice-cream freezer (and a little for Mother’s iced tea, which the was best, especially with all those chips and slivers of ice) to the sitting on the steps of the latticed back porch awaiting our turn to crank, (Somehow the adults made is seem a privilege to “crank.”) it was an all day affair. But what a sweet, mouth-watering memory of a childhood Labor Day as the Adams family said good-by to summer at 2211.

To everything there is a season, 
and a time to every purpose under the heaven:… a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; (Ecclesiastes 3:1-2)

Remembering Mother -- Mildred Davenport Adams (aka Gigi)

5/9/10 I have a rose bush in my side yard. Not “knock out roses” ---more the kind that look a little scraggly but still have a fragrance. Owen found it last night. I’ve been thinking about it ever since.
As a child, I remember always wearing a red rose on my dress to church on Mother’s Day. You got to wear a red one if your mother was still living. You wore a white one if your mother was dead. That seemed so morbid to me as a young girl. It also seemed to me that only old people wore a white rose or a fancy cymbidium orchid corsage. The only friend I had who would have worn a white one was Carolyn Cowherd and she went to the Church of Christ, not my church, so I never had to come face to face with that fear. But it was a fear! More than seeing all the roses as a way of honoring mothers, I saw them as a clear delineation of life or death.

We snipped the rose buds out of our backyard just before going to church. They were tiny, deep red roses that would open wide when in full bloom and smelled wonderful. Mother would cut one for all of us---even my brothers had one pinned to their left shirt pocket or the lapel of their sport coat as they grew older. None of us ever thought about not wearing our “Mother’s Day” rose.
At church, everyone else in Sunday School would have on their rose as well. Then we would all head into the big First Methodist sanctuary to “our pew” and join our parents for the 11 o’clock service.

It was tradition. Though rose bushes are in full bloom all over Memphis this week, I wonder if kids will have a bud pinned into their lapels. Over the years I’ve noticed a decline in this tradition. Only a few “older” women wear a corsage. I don’t know if that it is still true in my hometown or not as I have not been there on Mother’s Day in 10 years. May 2001, I was going home Mother’s Day weekend to attend church with Mother and to wear my red rose. I was afraid it might be my last time to wear a red one. Indeed it was. It was hard to come face to face with that old fear. To make matters worse, I got sick and was unable to travel that weekend. It’s one of my big regrets.

This Mother’s Day, I remember Mother and wish I could wear that red rose. I vividly remember her tall frame, beautiful thick hair and perfectly “made” face, gorgeous clothes and impeccable house, with windows so clean they were the "talk of the town." My children will remember their “Gigi” as well, because she continued to be their cheerleader just as she had been mine.

This morning as I walked toward the house after picking up the Commercial Appeal, I sidetracked to that sideyard rose bush and clipped one---a bright red one. Even as an adult it’s too chilling a thought to think that I would have to wear a white rose.

I’ve decided to acknowledge that Mother is very much alive in my heart and actions. I think that would honor her. So, that’s what I’ll celebrate today.

Amazing isn’t it---what memories a single red rose clipped from a sideyard bush can cause to flow through your head and into your heart!.