Too Lazy To Push a Turd

       

I feel her fingers scratch the side of my head as she rolls my hair in pink sponge rollers for church the next day.  My grandmother’s hands are wrinkled, rough, and scarred. As she is rolling my hair I ask her to tell me a story about when she was a little girl. I love to hear of her adventures and looking back now I realize how much I learned about life through these tales. She breathes in deep and I hear the air move through her lungs, left scarred by TB.  She was diagnosed in her twenties and had to be quarantined, the only appropriate treatment for the illness at this time.  She once told me of the devastation and sadness she felt when they took her from her babies and took her to the infirmary with all the other TB patients.  She told me of the many friends she made with the other women in quarantine and of the deep sense of loss and fear when one succumbed to the complications of the disease.  Through the sadness of her account I always looked forward to the part of the story when she was taken in the exam room and the doctor told her she would survive, but only because her heart was on the wrong side of her body.  He told her that she had been born that way, and although rare, it did occur.  He went on to explain that if she had been born as everyone else the damage caused by the TB would have taken her life.  Every time she got through telling me the story she would pause and then tell me, “But what he didn’t know is that I wasn’t just born that way.  I prayed to God to let me live and raise my babies…and he moved my heart that night.  Thank you Jesus!” 
 

She continues to roll my hair and starts the story I requested.  “When I was a little girl like you my hair was white as snow.  We were really poor like the colored folks.  My best friend was a little colored girl.  We walked with each other every day to the plantation where we would pick cotton.” She began. “Do you know what they used to call me?” She ask with slight laughter in her voice as she put her face beside mine so I could look at her.  “Cotton Patch!” She exclaimed as she let out a half laugh/half cough with a smile that went all the way to her beautiful eyes.  “Life was hard and we all had to do our part to help Moma and Daddy put food on the table.  I didn’t get to be a little girl like you do.  One day when we was pickin’ cotton the man who owned that whole plantation,” she started with a hint of awe in her voice, “walked up to Moma and ask if I could eat lunch with them.  His wife couldn’t have no babies and she wanted them real bad.  Moma said yes of course, and off I went.  Their house was the fanciest thing I could ever imagine.  I sat at a big ole table that I cant imagine why just two people would need.  I guess they had hoped to fill it with babies…” she trailed off momentarily.  She paused rolling my hair as well  and I feel her come back into this moment as she begins to roll again and starts back with her story, “Anyway.  We had fried chicken, taters, green beans, and so many other things.  At first I was really nervous and I guess they could tell ‘cause she asked me if I wanted a coke!  I wanted one! Real bad. I had heard they were so good, but we could never afford any.  She went to the kitchen and came back with it. She sat it in front of me.  It was in a pretty glass bottle that was frosted cold out of their ice box.  I remember how it fizzed and burned my throat when I took that first drink.” She pauses again as she briefly gets lost in the moment she is recalling.

 

“We went back to the fields and I could tell Moma was nervous when we walked back home that evening.  I heard her and Daddy talkin that night about me.  I couldn’t hear what they were sayin, but I could here them say ‘Jettie’ now and then.  Moma cried some.”  She said with sadness in her voice.  She cleared her throat and carried on. 

“The next mornin’ when me and my friend was walking to the field he came to me again and said, ‘Jettie you want to eat breakfast with us today?’  I nodded my head and looked back to see if Moma and Daddy would let me.  Daddy shook his head yes and off I went to the big house again.  When we go there she had a huge breakfast fixed.  Everything you could imagine. It smelled like heaven in there.  She had so many beautiful things too.  I wanted to touch them all, but I knew better.  I sat down at the table and she asked me what I wanted to eat.  I looked up and saw a box of corn flakes on the kitchen counter.  I had always wanted to try corn flakes, so I pointed to them.  She looked back at the counter and laughed, ‘You want cereal? That is all?’  I shook my head and she filled up a huge bowl with ice cold milk poured all over the top of it!” I could here the child in her voice as she recalled this magical experience.  “I ate that cereal so fast! I guess I thought it would just go away if I didn’t gulp it down so fast!” she said excitedly.  I felt a little jump from between her knees as she threw her hands up.  “I went back out to the fields almost too full to pick cotton!” she laughed.  Then the serious returned to her voice.  As she finished telling me the story in which I was completely fascinated by.

“Again that night I could tell Moma was sad and when I looked up she would be starin at me and smilin’  When we went to bed I listened real hard and I heard what her and Daddy was talkin about.  Turns out that man and his wife wanted Moma and Daddy to give me to them.  Daddy was tellin moma that they could give me a life that neither of them could even dream of.  Moma was cryin hard and told daddy that they couldn’t give her the love that they had for me.  She told him that we were a family and we worked hard.  We didn’t have nothin fancy, but we had God and just what we needed.  Just what God thought we needed.” She said matter-of-factly.  “I got scared cause I didn’t want to leave Moma and Daddy and my family.  I liked drinkin that coke and eatin them fancy corn flakes, but not more than my family.” She said with a hint of sadness in her voice for the people I was sure she missed on this very night.

“Your grandma aint afraid of work and you never be either.  Your great-grandparents worked hard their whole life to give me better.  I did that for your moma and they work hard to give to you so you can do better.  God tells us in the bible that you aint supposed to be lazy. Some people so lazy they caint even push a turd!” She says as she laughs at her own funny saying.  “Work is a blessin and it can be taken from ya like that!”  She snapped her scarred worn hand.  You can lose your job or you can get sick like your moma.  Then you will know the blessin that so many people complain about." she asserts.  "Them people stopped havin me over to eat.  I guess cause Moma and Daddy said they couldn’t have me.  But that was ok with me…” she finished in a satisfied tone.  I feel her snap in the last roller and I am now ready to go to toss and turn all night as those things pull my hair and poke me in the head!  But it will still be some of the most restful sleep I will ever get.

It is graduation night and I am so nervous.  I have completed nursing school despite the odds against me.  I show up to my first day in the ICU and I hit the ground running absorbing all around me.  I have no time to eat or even take a bathroom break.  I return from maternity leave to my job as a Case Manager.  It is so different from the nursing I know.  But I work day in and day out to learn every aspect of it.  I take online CEUs and find better ways to do things.  I find myself behind a computer screen as I take on the new challenge of Informatics.  I know nothing about the software, but I click here and I click there.  I ask questions.  I ask for more assignments until I make sure that I know the computer system inside out and upside down.  I want to be better.  I need to be better and do an excellent job.  Through the exhaustion that work can sometimes bring I close my eyes and I see them.  I see my grandmas wrinkled, worn, scarred hand clasped in prayer.  I know who I am. I am her granddaughter.  I am not now nor have I ever been scared of work.  I am thankful for the privilege to have a job and the health to complete the tasks entrusted to me. 

My grandma would be beyond proud and beside herself to know that her granddaugher, Jodie Tucker Howell, is a Registered Nurse with a Bachelor’s Degree in my field. She always used to tell me how smart I was.  “You was smart when you came out of your moma.” She would say to me.  “I told Martha you are going to be something better than any of us ever imagined!”  Man that always made me feel so special, and it gave me part of the drive that I hold today to be who I am in all aspects of my life, but especially the professional part of it. 

My friend Amanda Bradley shared this today and I loved it! It is part of what inspired this blog posting…

"Hold yourself responsible for a higher standard than anybody expects of you. Never excuse yourself." -Henry Ward Beecher

And the good Lord put it this way (and many more ways in numerous scriptures)…

“For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.”  -2 Thessalonians 3:10 ESV