A Few Good Women By Sandy Williams Driver

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Matilda
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A Few Good Women By Sandy Williams Driver

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Photo of Dalton and Ilene Williams

By Sandy Williams Driver

I recently read Rick Bragg's National Bestseller, "All Over but the Shoutin'," which is the author's recollections of growing up poor in the Deep South. The book evolves around Bragg's mother, Margaret, who went eighteen years without a new dress so that her three sons could have school clothes. In our culture, Mrs. Bragg is what folks would call a "real, good woman" because she repeatedly sacrificed pieces of herself to her children, her husband and her home.

While reading the book, I started thinking about all the "real, good women" I have known in my life. Women who pushed aside their own dreams to make room for those of their family. I could only think of a few.

My maternal grandmother, Dollie, was a "good woman." In 1921, she married a man with five small children, but didn't know about her ready made family until after the hasty vows were spoken. She stayed because if she had left, who would have raised those young'uns? She took it all in with a grain of salt and bore her giant of a husband seven more healthy babies over the next few years.

I have the deepest respect for my dad's sister, Beatrice, and believe she fits the title of a "good woman." In the 1940s, she buried three babies to diseases that people these days have never even heard about. She endured each funeral and tiny casket with a straight-back and eyes overflowing with hot tears because she had no other choice. She still had one healthy little girl tugging on her skirt tail who needed a Momma.

Though she is extremely modest, I know my mother, Ilene, has always been a "real, good woman." In 1946, she snuck away to marry a handsome soldier in order to get out of her father's scorching cotton field. Barely a year later, however, she found herself stuck in the middle of her in-law's larger field of the snowy white boils and this time there was a bouncing baby boy snuggled safely atop her tow sack.

A "good woman" in the old days was easy to recognize. She never ate a bite until all her children had their fill and she insisted that she preferred a chicken thigh to a breast so her husband or little one's could have the white meat. She could make a biscuit that would melt in your mouth and would cook for thirty people at a moment's notice. She knew how to can beans, make jelly and pickles and her pies were talked about for miles.

Most of her clothes were homemade and if a child woke up sick in the night, she never complained about sitting up with them and praying for the "good Lord above to have mercy on their innocent soul." A "good woman" went to church every time the doors were open and she always knew the words to every hymn sang each week. She didn't complain too much when her husband came home late at night, just a little tipsy, because at least he came home at all.

Those women had no idea what romance was and would have though it foolish to light a candle other than to brighten a room. They had heard of divorce, but without a man, who would pay the rent and the children's doctor bills, and besides that, what would people think?

Love to those women was a man who kept enough wood chopped to keep the fire going all night and enough meat hanging in the smokehouse to last the winter. Love was having a spring nearby to provide plenty of fresh, clear water and having apples and oranges to pass out to the kids on Christmas morning. Love meant saving enough money from ginning the cotton in the fall to buy the little ones a new pair of shoes before the first cold spell hit.

Today's society provides many nice, decent hard-working women. There are lots of women who work eight hour shifts at an office or factory and then have to go home, cook supper, do laundry, and attend PTA meetings among a thousand other things.

A handful of them might be called "good women," but can they really be compared to those saintly images of the past of which songs are written about? At least today's woman has the comforts of modern appliances, electricity and running water.

The next time I get a little stressed out if I don't get to check my email thirteen times a day or when my cell phone gets too much static to carry on a conversation, I will stop and think about my heroic ancestors. I will remember those few "good women" I have had the privilege of knowing and be so grateful that the blood of those fine ladies runs through my veins.

© Sandy Williams Driver
Published by U.S. Legacies May 2004
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