A Different Take On Royalty

This week's theme is "king". I have thought and thought about this post and no ancestor seemed to hit the mark until I read my SIL's post and her tribute to her parents. I, like her, had always planned to blog about ancestors further up the tree, for privacy reasons, and honestly, I didn't want to unintentionally step on someone's toes or hurt feelings. Well - not to sound rude - but to the tune of 'It's My Party' - It is my blog and I'll blog what I want to.....

There are some whose feelings will be hurt (if they were to read this) by what I'm going to post. And I hate that. I hate that I have been made to feel guilty about my feelings and relationships that have meant a great deal to me - that have shaped me into the person I am today, for better or for worse. I hate that it makes others feel like they weren't or aren't loved by me, because that's simply not true. I hold special memories of several people, but for whatever reason, a select few, had a closer bond to me and that's just life. I see it with my own son, and the way he cherishes his father's family. Sometimes that's hard for me, but because of my own experiences, I don't begrudge him of this. Each of our relationships are unique to us. And I wish simply, that hurt feelings didn't exist, especially when the offense isn't intentional in any way.

So without further ado.... I give you my heart.

My parents separated and divorced before I was even a year old. My time was divided up and I spent every other weekend, a few spring breaks, and a week or two during the summer with my dad. My dad worked at the family owned processing plant during the week and on Saturdays at the local sale barn for the first 10-12 years of my life. These years are typically the most influential years. My weekends with him could be summed up like this: He would pick me up Friday evening around 5, he and I would check his cattle and head back up my grandparents house, his parents, for supper. And because he had to wake up so early to get to the sale barn on Saturday ( 3am - 4am ) he would leave me to spend the night with them and would pick me up after he got off work. Now sale barn work isn't a shift job. Some days he would be home in the afternoon, but sometimes, when the sale ran long, it could be as late as 10 or 11 o'clock that night. He would then pick me up and I would spend Saturday night with him at his house. The next morning we would wake up bright and early, tend to any young bottle calves he might have then I would head "up the mountain" (about 10 miles up the road) back to my grandparents house where they, along with my great-grandmother, would take me to church. My dad stayed home to take care of  his cattle and rest. After church we would all come back for a big  Sunday dinner, a little more farm work, not much because it was Sunday - a day of rest - then supper and then Dad would take me home.

Now for the details... and before I even start I already feel compelled to start making excuses and apologies here as to why these people meant such a great deal to me and were closer to me than others. I am torn between feeling angry that I have been conditioned to feel guilty about these relationships and feelings of pity because of others insecurities, everyone's high emotions (mine included) and childish things that have torn relationships to pieces. It should not have been so, nor should it remain today, but it does.

That being said, here goes...

You see, from the time I was in diapers I was treated very special by my dad and his parents. By my dad, because I was all he had at that time. By my grandparents ( Mammy, Bampy and Grandma Nall) all I can do is speculate. I suspect for my Mammy it was a place of pity and regret. She felt sorry for me because my parents were divorced. She was an incredibly sentimental person. Her father died when she was only 3 and her mother never remarried. She always held my relationship with my father to the highest regard because she herself never had that relationship with hers. I feel like she tried her best to make my times with my dad as special as she could, because in the back of her mind she knew from experience that you never know just how much time you will get. She always spoke about my dad to me with so much respect for his work ethic and made sure I knew how much he loved me. I heard these things from her every. single. visit. And so, I never for one minute doubted his love for me. Maybe she over compensated because on my weekends with my dad, because of his job,  I really didn't spend much time with him. But what time I did spend was so impactful. On our trips up and down 'the mountain' we would talk, tell stories, make up silly songs and I knew that when I was there, I was loved. I was loved by my dad, my Mammy, my Bampy and by his mother, Grandma Nall, who lived less than a mile down the road and would visit often. So there I was this young girl surrounded by 4 adults that gave me a lot of attention and a lot of one on one time teaching me all the things they felt were important in life. My grandfather whom we all called Bampy, was the strong silent type. A man of few words but with a lot of impact. A man I loved and was a wee bit scared of. But not too much because his smile was so kind and warm. He loved to aggravate me (and my cousins) but it was always with that warm kind smile. He was my king. He was the highest authority as far as the farm work went. He was also the boss of the family owned processing plant and he was definitely the king of his castle. My Mammy, his wife, was my queen. And his mother, my Grandma Nall, was the former queen and true matriarch of the Nall family. They all lived their lives with a lot of moral purpose. I was taught my place as a young woman and they shared their life skills with me, from cooking to sewing to bible study and prayer. They told stories about their lives and the lessons they learned.  My time there was filled with instruction for life and I felt like a princess. Not the spoiled rotten pampered princess. But the adored, apple of my eye, kind of princess who would one day inherit the world and would need to be prepared to live life well and know her place in it. I was invested in a great deal. And in return I held them in very high regard, and I still do, though they are all gone now, except for my daddy.

My weekends there were full of hard work. My time with them was nearly all spent working. Saturdays were for housework and getting everyone's clothes washed and ironed and ready for church on Sunday, though my slip was always getting misplaced. And you should know the queens in my life forbid going to church without your slip! Occasionally there would be a button that needed to be sewn onto one of my Bampy's shirts and this task was made to feel like one of such importance. I was proud to be able to accomplish it. Once a month, Saturdays were also for going to the store for groceries. This was before the great Wal-Mart Super Center. When you went for groceries it was an all day trek to Dillons in town and then  Food-4-Less, IGA and Wal Mart located two towns over. My job was to bend down and get the items on the bottom shelves that were hard for my Mammy and Grandma Nall to reach and of course to help bag and load and unload all the groceries. These trips were also a treat because we usually would eat out at KFC or Long John Silvers. As I got older, the cattle sale was no longer on Saturdays but Thursdays and so I was now spending a lot of those days with my Dad and his girlfriend (now wife) Dawna. There were fences to build, hay to haul, land to clear, cattle to work and as a young woman I was taught and expected to know when to leave the manly labor in time to make it back to the house to get lunch ready for the men and to stay late to clean up before rejoining the men outdoors. My Mammy also taught us girls to always listen for the rattle the ice makes in a glass when it was empty and to promptly refill any man's glass that was. My male cousins always thought this was a treat to have their female cousins wait on them. They would rattle those glasses and smile big when we would fill their glass with a smirk. There were a lot of 'old-timey' values that were instilled in me when I was growing up and they make me feel a bit unique. I'm proud of the things they taught me, and because of my circumstances, for the intentional one on one time I had. Because of my age, at the time of my parents divorce, my grandparents didn't treat me as much like a grandchild as they did a child. And because all their children were grown, unless my cousins were there, they treated me like an only child in their home. Maybe this is why my relationship with them was so close. To me, the reasons don't really matter. All I know is when I look back on my child hood I remember those days most and with such fondness. I will remember rubbing my Bampy's ankles with asorbine jr. because of his gout, the way his laugh sounded more like a cackle, helping him to pick rocks up out of the garden,  and how it was him that taught me one early morning how to make gravy. I remember helping Grandma Nall snap peas in the porch swing, or playing with old spools from used up thread, as she hand made several quilts. I remember my Mammy singing praise hymns in the kitchen and teaching us all to say our prayers at night. I remember the wood box and having to keep it full and learning how to start a fire. I also remember only being given 2 matches to light the trash in the burn barrel and Mammy was always disappointed when I had to come back for more. And I always had to come back for more. I remember the big feasts when the entire family would get together with all my aunts and uncles and cousins and I regret how it isn't like that any more. I regret how life isn't as simple as it seems in the eyes of a child and how a dynasty seems to have fallen apart and I'm not even sure as to why. I wonder how it is that these people that showed me such love and care and intention now have a legacy of a broken family that barely speaks. I wonder in what ways I've played my part. I wonder why words of repentance don't feel as sincere as words of hurt. I miss my king and queens and I wish so desperately, so often, that I could call them up, if only to tell them just how much they mean to me.  And I regret so much that the old saying, 'You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone', is far too true.