The Life of Me | Page 9

of impatient dissatisfaction from them, but not from this mother. She was one of a kind. She seemed to enjoy it all. She was my Mama.
I was standing on Mama's left. When Albert finished and was full, Mama stood him down on the floor on her right. And while he was standing there holding to her dress for support, before Mama put his breakfast away, back into her blouse, she looked over at me and very motherly asked, "Now, do you want some of the baby's milk?"
I didn't say a word. I just bashfully backed away a step or so and looked up at her and thought something like, "That's for the baby, not for me."
For the first time in my life I was consciously aware of my mother's love for me, in that brief moment, because of that simple little gesture. The poet expressed it better than I can, when he wrote, ". . .the love of a mother for her son that transcends all other affections of the soul." I was deeply moved by the thought that, although she had another little one to hold closely and love and nourish, she had not pushed me aside. Her love included me too.
As the years went by, sometimes all seemed hopeless and I would ask myself, "What the heck? Who cares anyway?" And always that little three-year-old kid would give me the answer, "Mama does."
I remember the windmill by our garden and the water tank way up high on the tower. When the wind blew and the mill was pumping water, we could open a faucet at the top of the well and get a drink of fresh cold water. We had a tin cup hanging on a nail on the windmill tower to drink out of. And we kept some water hanging up on our back porch in a wooden water bucket made out of cedar. There was a dipper in the bucket that we all drank out of.
Once when Papa was building his big barn at the Flint place, before he got it finished, a strong wind hit it and leaned it way over, but it didn't blow it all the way down. Papa took a block and tackle and got some men to help him and they pulled it back up straight.
Our house had three rooms. One of them was a kitchen and dining room together. There was a long porch at the front of the house and an L-shaped porch on the back. There were flower beds and flowers in our front yard, and morning glory vines on the front yard fence and china trees in the back yard. They made good shades to play in.
There was a hog pen on the north side of the barn, with sheds to protect the hogs from the summer heat and the winter cold. The horse lots and cow lots were on the south side of the barn, with sheds to shelter the stock. Feed troughs were under the sheds and feed was stored in the big barn.
I remember the hill west of the barn about a hundred yards. It wasn't a steep hill--just a gentle rise in the land. But it was high enough to get up on and see Uncle Andrew's house and Grandma's house. I couldn't see Grandma's house as good as I could Uncle Andrew's because hers had so many big trees all around it.
I remember we had a syrup mill too, up on the slope northwest of the barn. We had a horse that would go round and round and make the big iron rollers squeeze the juice out of the cane stalks. The juice would run down a spout and we would catch it in buckets. Then Mama would cook the juice in a big pan over a fire out there in the pasture.
Of course Frank and Susie and Earl would all help keep the fire going and help Papa keep putting cane stalks through the big rollers. Joel would help a little bit, but I was just in the way. And Albert had to be looked after too.
Sometimes the cows and horses would come and try to eat the cane and we had to put them in pens by the barn. When we finished squeezing the juice out, we would let them all come out of the pen and eat the stalks we didn't want any more.
When we got the juice cooked enough it was good ribbon cane syrup and we would put it in big jugs and take it down in the cellar. But not all of it. We would take some of it in the kitchen to eat.
I remember a big pile of wood and lots of mesquite posts. They were southwest of the barn on the slope of the