Mamaw Wisdom

I did not have a Mamaw.  I had Granny, and I had Grandmother.  But “mamaw” was for those who lived outside the city limits.  Mamaws were who my friends went to spend a Saturday with, shelling peas or shucking corn.  Maybe they even had a feather bed or a loft in a barn or something ultra-cool country like that.

My children and grandchildren ended up with a Mamaw when I remarried a few years ago.  Their names for their other grandmothers are very family-specific, so a “Mamaw” was a new thing to them too.  This Mamaw does live out in the country, but the days of farming are in the past.  However, I have learned that mamaws come with particular bits of wisdom.

Once while visiting with the Mamaw, she told me a story from many years back about how her grandsons —cousins of close to the same age — were playing in the barn, and the younger sister of one came crying to Mamaw that the boys were leaving her out.  Now had it been me, I’d have probably put pressure on the boys to include her, causing her to feel vindicated and superior and the boys to feel resentful.  Mamaw, in her wisdom, left the boys to what they were doing and said to the granddaughter, “Is that so?  Well, would you like to make something here with me?”  Mamaw gave her a pointed item of some kind, and little Kaitlyn scratched her initials there in the headboard of the ancient bed in the room, and along with those letters, carved a sweet memory.  They’re still there, and if Mamaw’s rendition is true (one doesn’t always know with Mamaws — the lesson is more important than the literal facts), Kaitlyn still walks back to see that headboard every now and then.

A situation recently brought the Mamaw and me into a conversation about people in need of help.  She related a story about how one Christmas many years ago, she was the leader of a group that was giving out food to those in need.  They went to deliver to a family in the community, and they saw that there were dozens of canned foods stacked up in a corner of the kitchen.  Nothing wrong with that, but they were said to be destitute, in immediate need, truly hungry.  “All they had to do was open the cans and heat up the food,” said Mamaw.  Her words drifted off, and she looked down the road, shaking her head.  “You just really can’t help people who won’t help themselves.”  

Mamaw love is a powerful thing too.  It doesn’t divide; it expands.  One day I was commenting on the increasing number of great grandchildren through the above mentioned grandsons and granddaughter.  I added, “And then I came along and brought you more!  Well, some step-great-grandchildren.”  

She looked straight into my eyes.  “I don’t see ‘step’.”  

Mamaw love also motivates this 88 year-old woman to don a hat, get on the golf cart and drive over to our house (across the road) when those non-step great grandchildren come over and give them rides around the yard or take them to the creek to build “frog houses.”  Also to hold them and watch them and say, “Ohh Claudia.  They’re so beautiful.”  And sometimes she’ll just slip me a coupla $20 bills and say “Get each of them something from me.”

Grannies, Grammies, Mimmies, LuLus, Honeys, CeCes, Grandmas, Big Mamas, and Meemaws— here’s to the lot of them.  Just for today, though, a special shout-out to the Mamaw wisdom I hope I’ll learn from and can, in some form, pass down.