What I Know About Lucille.

Here is what I know about Lucille. 

She was born on a farm in Oklahoma smack in the middle of August, a birthday she would share with my mom some 40 years later.  Having spent many of my childhood August days in Oklahoma, I can imagine pretty well what it must have been like.  The ground would have been cracking in the heat, but there probably would have been a whisper of a breeze.  Just enough to creak some hinges, rustle some leaves, and tickle some of the grass fields. There wouldn’t have been any clouds, and the sun would seem to be pulsing in the sky.  The farm buildings would have had blurred edges, would have wavered in the distance: an illusion popular with heat rays the world over.

The furthest she went in school was the 8th grade.  I imagine her school to have been one of those all-grades-in-one-room situations.  This was Depression-era Henryetta, Oklahoma, after all.  I bet she was really smart. 

She was married after she graduated.  She was 14; her husband was 25.  This is where my ability to realistically imagine ceases; I have no place to start wondering what that must have been like.  I was still firmly a kid after 8th grade, running around in purple overalls and colored scrunchies. (My mom’s meticulously chronicled photo albums tragically capture the bad right alongside the really good, much to my well-vocalized chagrin). I hadn’t even gotten my period yet, and was certainly in no position to run a farmhouse.  She did it, though; I don’t know how she felt, whether she was happy, what she thought about as she tended the farm, the kitchen, the husband.  I don’t know if it’s what she wanted at all.

She had her first child when she was 15; a daughter.  Two more daughters came next in quick succession; no more children after that.  I wonder, actually, if his didn’t have something to do with having no sons.  On a farm, wouldn’t male labor be more prized?  I wonder if she was happy, or if she felt ashamed.  I wonder if her husband was a good dad; if he was around; if he raised those girls or if she did. 

I used to sit on her lap as a kid, and she crocheted dresses for my barbies. She made some of the kitchen towels in my apartment. She sent a Christmas card every year, something very religious and meaningful.

She was part Cherokee, I don’t know quite how much.  They say that blood is why I have such high cheekbones.

She was my great-grandma, and my dad went to her funeral today.  The sadness I feel is mostly this: I really didn’t know her at all.