Mountain Mamaws

Mountain mamaws do a lot of things but one thing they won't do is dote on you. You've gotta have tough skin around mamaw. She is liable to tell you "you're gettin' kinda wide" or  "your hair looks like some of them people down at Bingo."


Mamaw doesn't know the meaning of (nor allow the use of) the word "bored" and her hands never idle between the cannin', crochetin', quiltin', picklin', plantin', and porch sweepin'. She has no time for foolishness and your book-readin' doesn't count as being busy. What busy means is your hands are a-movin'. At the very least you could be playin' puzzle but better still you'd be knittin a pot-holder or making that chocolate pie.


Her religious beliefs are more akin to old wives tales than anything she heard from some preacher while sittin in a hard-backed pew. It's simply bout what's practical. You know like the danger of canning kraut during your time of the month. That's something you can live by, you have to can that shit every year. And she is washed in the blood but Jesus ain't gonna dig the potatoes or string beans so she stays home on Sundays to do what Jesus won't.


Mountain Mamaws have gotten the short end of the stick from the word go. They are the loyal wives of drunk husbands who have spent their marriage washing coal dust out with the Wringer washing machine on the front porch. She don't have time to think about arthritis or whether her knobby, gnarled fingers are afflicted with it. Mamaw doesn't make the money but she sure as hell hid it when it came in the door else it would've been squandered, drank, gambled and pissed away by Papaw.


Mamaw is a martyr. It's all she knows and she's earned it. She's raised eleven children and a husband who was still a boy when they drove to the preacher's house in Coeburn and he called them "man and wife."


And when the black lung settlement finally comes, she'll move out of the holler and into town. She'll quit keepin' a garden (save for a few cucumbers) because for the first time in her life she don't have to. But don't for one second think she doesn't expect you to raise one.


You know Mamaw will slice you up one of them cucumbers anytime you ask and she'll run you outta the house stokin' up the wood stove in April to make sure ain't nobody never cold. But Mamaw is still a hard woman. The words "I love you" don't come naturally to her. She shows her love through her works.


There aren't many mountain mamaws left. But they live on in our mamas and the way they struggle to show affection or know when to take a rest. Being raised by a mountain mamaw leaves you with  grit and gumption but what it won't leave you with is a tender heart.








These are broad descriptions of several different mamaws I've known. Mostly of Beulah and Marie but also of Shelby, Peggy, Pearlie, Gracie, Georgie, Sally, Eunice, Minnie Sue and countless others.