{"id":182,"date":"2011-12-01T19:22:00","date_gmt":"2011-12-01T19:22:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2011\/12\/happy-birthday-mama\/"},"modified":"2011-12-01T19:22:00","modified_gmt":"2011-12-01T19:22:00","slug":"happy-birthday-mama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/johnbeckett\/2011\/12\/happy-birthday-mama.html","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday Mama"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>\n\n\n\n
<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Pearl West, circa 1930<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Today would have been my grandmother\u2019s 104th birthday. Pearl Hale West was born on this day in 1907 in Crossville, Tennessee. <\/p>\n

She was the only grandparent I really got to know. My father\u2019s father died before I was born and his mother died when I was seven. My mother\u2019s father died when I was nine. Shortly after that, Mama (which is what we all called her \u2013 my mother was and is \u201cMother\u201d) came to live with us. She lived in a mobile home behind our house until she died in 1990 \u2013 long enough to see me graduate from high school and college, get married, and build a house a couple stones throws from her.<\/p>\n

She was everything a grandmother is supposed to be: warm, loving, generous, patient and kind. <\/p>\n

She was a good Christian and she joined the Baptist church where my parents went, although she didn\u2019t care for the bombastic preaching and often reminisced about her Methodist church \u201cwhere they worship God and don\u2019t whoop and holler.\u201d In her later years she would occasionally turn her hearing aid off when the preaching got too loud or when the sermon didn\u2019t strike her as suitably reverent. <\/p>\n

Mama did most of the cooking for us. She liked cooking, it made her feel like she was contributing to the family, and she was good at it. She was a good ol\u2019 Southern cook who fried everything \u2013 her food may not have been particularly healthy but it was good. I can still remember her fried okra, cornbread, and peach cobbler. Her Thanksgiving dressing was the best I\u2019ve ever had. Everyone else said she put too much sage in it \u2013 I don\u2019t think there\u2019s such a thing as too much sage!<\/p>\n

She was healthy and energetic at age 80 but then developed cancer. Her last two years were difficult and painful for her and for the rest of the family. She died at home on October 20, 1990. She was \u201cready to go home\u201d and we were glad her suffering ended.<\/p>\n

I sometimes wonder what she would have thought of my spiritual journey and where it\u2019s taken me in the years since she left this world. I don\u2019t think she would have understood. Unitarian Universalism \u2013 much less my more esoteric and mystical practices \u2013 is too different from her Methodism, and she wasn\u2019t one for questioning authority or challenging traditions. <\/p>\n

But I am sure \u2013 as sure as I am about anything \u2013 that she would have loved me just the same.<\/p>\n

Happy Birthday, Mama.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Pearl West, circa 1930 Today would have been my grandmother\u2019s 104th birthday. Pearl Hale West was born on this day in 1907 in Crossville, Tennessee. She was the only grandparent I really got to know. My father\u2019s father died before I was born and his mother died when I was seven. My mother\u2019s father died […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1129,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-182","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nHappy Birthday Mama<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Pearl West, circa 1930Today would have been my grandmother\u2019s 104th birthday. Pearl Hale West was born on this day in 1907 in Crossville, Tennessee. 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