mother

Texas Standard: July 30, 2020

The complicated formula for funding schools in Texas now adds 5 letters and two numbers: COVID-19. How should we fund schools while in the midst of a global pandemic? The push and pull, we’ll have more. We also learn about the movement born out of the murder of Fort Hood soldier Vannesa Guillen: NoMás. What it means to say No More. And have you heard about “hygiene theater”? Does it make us safer? We’ll find out. And we take a look at the growing pains of oil production in Texas, an industry much touted by the president during his visit yesterday. Those stories and more today on the Texas Standard:

On Mother’s Day: Remembering Nonnie

On Mother’s Day, I couldn’t help but think of my grandmother, too, because she was also my mother. She was, and this remains true for many kids today, my second mother. She lived with us and was my back-up mom – my safety net of sanity when life got crazy. She was a grand-mother.

Her name was Nonnie, which my mom told me was short of Eunice. Nonnie was my nanny until I reached first grade. To the extent that I have any talent as a writer I attribute to her. She taught me to read and write early. She was a role model as a disciplined writer. When she was 70 she bought a Smith Corona electric typewriter – a beautiful shiny blue work of art with chrome trim. To me, it seemed like a sports car for writing. In six years she wrote four novels at the kitchen table during my nap time. The tap, tap, tap sound of the keys was my lullaby most afternoons.

She wrote under the name Sylvester Wimberley. Sylvester because she guessed a man was more likely to get published than a woman. Wimberley because she so loved that Hill Country town.

I wish I could tell you that Simon & Schuster discovered her and she had a couple of best-sellers, but that was not the case. When she died at age 82, in 1969, we found the four novels – and journals and diaries – in her chest of drawers, neatly stacked in manila envelopes beneath the many tablecloths she had crocheted over the years.

They were all moved up to the attic with many of her memories where they were out of sight, but not fully out of mind. When I was in graduate school ten years later, I went up there and found her manuscripts in an old suitcase behind Christmas decorations. The pages were yellowed and brittle, but still quite readable. Over the next few days I read them all. I had hoped to find an Atwood in the attic, but, truth is, Nonnie was more of a diarist than a novelist; more Aurelius than Atwood. She was, perhaps, like her grandson: good in short bursts, but not as skilled sustaining the long narrative.

One journal entry especially moved me; it focuses entirely on her lifelong relationship with her hair:

From my earliest memories my hair has been a subject of conversation. My father was the first to make me conscious of it. He thought it was beautiful. It was long and straight and heavy with a gold cast to it. My father would not let it be cut. Even as the younger girls were getting theirs cut, my father would not let me cut mine because he liked the length of the braid.

My grandmother was on her deathbed and mother had to take time about with her sisters caring for her. So my father took care of us and he had his say about how I should wear my hair. When I went to school the boys would make fun of it saying it was the color of molasses candy that had been pulled. I am not sure the golden tint was still in it then. The boys delighted in sticking the ends of the braids into their ink wells which earned them my angry retaliation.

When I was twelve I went outside with my grandfather McGee one summer’s day. I went out on the front porch with him just after sunup. He turned to talk to me and he stopped and said, “Eunice, I didn’t know that your hair was such a pretty red.” I laughed and said that it was just the sun shining through it and lighting it up like that. I never forgot that moment. I had had so few compliments in my life and I was to remember that one always. My grandfather would sometimes pass behind me at the supper table and run his rough hand over my hair. He didn’t say anything, but I found it as comforting as a compliment.

Many years later, after I had married, I still kept my hair long and braided. It had become strawberry blonde. I wore it as a braid wrapped around my head. I took the pins [out] of my hair and wrapped the braid around my neck. It was as wide as a collar. Once I was wearing it that way when I went to call on Betty Graham and she asked me where I got a collar that so closely matched my hair. I told her it WAS my hair. She had to take it down to see the length of it and was surprised by its weight, too. I suppose that was the longest, and heaviest, it ever was.

Once when my niece Guy Ann was five years old and she and I were standing out in front of the Gunter Hotel in San Antonio waiting for my husband Fred, a strange woman came up to me and said, “Lady, did you know that your hair and that child’s hair are exactly the same color?” I had not thought about it but when we got home Guy Ann wanted to see for herself. So she pulled my hair down and laid hers over it. Sure enough, you could not tell where mine ended and hers began. As the years went by Guy Ann’s hair got a little darker and mine got ever lighter until it was both blonde and white.

In 1963, when I was in my late 70s, I ran into Sam Black, a man I had not seen for fifty years. He greeted me with these words, “Well, Eunice, you have lost some of the gold in your hair!”  Indeed I had.

Now that I am 80 years old, my hair is all white. White like new cotton. And I think it is just lovely.

My grandmother wanted all her life to be published. I am happy to know that, now, by quoting her here, she finally is. Happy Mother’s Day, Grandma.

Texas Standard: March 28, 2018

A controversial change already facing a legal challenge: how might Texas be affected by a new citizenship question in the next US census? We’ll explore. Also, five months after a massacre in Sutherland Springs, church officials announce new plans to rebuild, we’ll hear the latest. And what if you could compare the earnings potential of one college degree against another? Despite a federal ban on collecting such data, Texas’ flagship university is doing the numbers, we’ll explore the implications. And it was James Dean’s final film, and a larger than life commentary on Texas as a microcosm of America. The editor of Kirkus Review calls a new book the definitive account of the movie ‘Giant’. Those stories and so much more today on the Texas Standard:

Texas Standard: March 26, 2018

More than a billion dollars green lighted for a physical barrier on the Texas border. The start of the new wall or something else? We’ll take a closer look. Also, after traveling the world in support of the Trump administration and fighting with his boss, what’s Rex Tillerson’s next move? Why Tillerson may be on the short list to head up the state’s flagship universities. And is west Texas literally losing ground? What’s behind a certain sinking feeling. Also the student anti-gun marches across the lone star state, and the pushback too. Plus, notes for the president’s big meeting with North Korea from a Texas scholar. Those stores and so much more today on the Texas Standard:

Texas Standard: March 16, 2018

Now more than 300 federal agents join police in the Texas capitol city to get to the bottom of a mystery over package bombs left on front stoops. Three bombs, two dead and a whole lot of questions, we’ll explore. We’ll hear about the first fatality, a talented 17 year old en route to UNT’s celebrated music program. Also, water scarcity in El Paso at the heart of a case before the supreme court. And in east Texas, the explosion that occurred 81 years ago this weekend. An event so traumatic people didn’t talk about it for generations. Now they’re trying to make sure the victims aren’t forgotten. Those stories and more today on the Texas Standard:

Texas Standard: August 1, 2017

It’s been one year since students with concealed handgun permits have been allowed to bring weapons on campus. We’ll explore what’s happened since. Plus, what skipping to the front of the security line at Texas airports might cost you in privacy. Also, a glimpse inside the personal notes and snapshots belonging to playwright and actor Sam Shepard. And, how hard is to change a birth certificate in Texas? Those stories and lots more today on the Texas Standard:

Three Secrets of Life From My 101-Year-Old Mother

My mom lived to be 101 and five months. She said once you reached 99, you started counting your age like a newborn – in months: 99 and six months, 99 and nine months. She used to advise that if you wanted to live to be a hundred, you should live to be 99 and then be very, very careful.

Mary B. Strong, whose name doubled as her motto, was a tough, no-nonsense woman. A Daughter of the American Revolution, survivor of the Great Depression; an honest as the day is long woman of the Texas soil. She had what John Wayne called True Grit. I think anyone who lives so long, one in about 40,000, must have True Grit.

So what was the secret to her longevity?

She was always willing to try new things – never one to say, “I’m too old for that.” She bought her first computer when she was 88, was on the Internet writing emails at 92 and had 115 Facebook friends when she died. She refused to let technology leave her behind. Even when her hands were gnarled by arthritis and she could no longer type, she would dictate her emails to those who would type for her. Just a few days before she passed, she was admiring my iPhone, saying, “Oh, I’m gonna buy one of those for myself.”

She didn’t care about the phone, really. She saw the potential for a thousand pictures of grandkids conveniently carried in her purse.

A second secret was that she never stopped moving. She mowed her own lawn ’til she was 85 and never stopped gardening. When she was 99, I asked her what she would do if she could be 18 for a day, and she said, “Oh, I would RUN. I would get out on that Galveston beach and just run until I ran out of island.”

She continued to do her own dishes and laundry right up to her last days. She went to church three times a week, never allowing most illness to keep her away. She’d say, “ I won’t feel any worse at church, and I might feel better.”

She was courageous. For her 101st birthday, she was asking me to take her for a ride on my motorcycle. I told her I‘d have to strap her down with bungee cords and she said that would be fine. Always ready for the next adventure.

Third was her diet. She ate pretty much what she pleased. Eggs and bacon, BBQ, cheeseburgers, Mexican food, a Coca-Cola every mid-morning – and a bowl of ice cream before bed. Her only compromise was in portions – always small. And no alcohol at all.

She had great pride. Her measure of people was in whether or not they took pride in what they did and how they lived. Sometimes her standards were unfair, like the time she visited Arizona and complained about the shabby lawns out there. I reminded her that it was a desert and she said, “But if they had pride, they’d have nice yards.”

That was her central value, I suppose: Pride. She always said to me, “I don’t care much what you do in life, just make sure you live a life you can be proud of.” And if she didn’t personally like something, like the new truck I’d bought, she’d say, “Well, it’s not my kinda truck, but I’m proud of it for ya.”

And that pride she looked for her in others was evident in her. For her 101st birthday, I took her to the hair salon, a place she called the beauty parlor. On the way home I told her how lovely she looked. She leaned over my way as if she was sharing a secret. She said, “You know, a lot of people think I look only about 90.”

Give your Mom a big bear hug for Mother’s Day. And say the four words she cherishes most: “I love you, Mom.”

W.F. Strong is a Fulbright Scholar and professor of Culture and Communication at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. At Public Radio 88 FM in Harlingen, Texas, he’s the resident expert on Texas literature, Texas legends, Blue Bell ice cream, Whataburger (with cheese) and mesquite smoked brisket.