{"id":42690,"date":"2016-07-12T08:00:00","date_gmt":"2016-07-12T15:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/redeeminggod.com\/?p=42690"},"modified":"2017-10-22T13:10:07","modified_gmt":"2017-10-22T20:10:07","slug":"mamas-win-duh-box","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/redeeminggod.com\/mamas-win-duh-box\/","title":{"rendered":"Mama\u2019s Win Duh Box"},"content":{"rendered":"
Sam Riviera is a frequent and popular contributor to this blog. Many of his posts on loving your neighbors<\/a> and ministering to the homeless<\/a> have been\u00a0among the most popular articles on this blog. Below is another one of his heart-wrenching and insightful posts.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n A rusty old pickup truck piled high with an odd assortment of what looked like junk pulled into our gravel driveway one sunny spring afternoon. An older couple dressed like farmers from the back woods crawled out of the cab as I stood there watching.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re your mama\u2019s kin from back in the hills and hollers of West Virginia. Your mama wrote us and told us she\u2019s doin\u2019 poorly, so we come to help out for a spell. You must be her oldest child.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cUh, yeah, I\u2019m Sam.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWell you can juz call us Annie and Un Kull. Where\u2019s your mama, child?\u201d Annie said. As I would soon learn, Annie did most of the talking and Un Kull didn\u2019t say much.<\/p>\n I showed Annie and Un Kull (I eventually figured out they were saying auntie and uncle, but they pronounced it Annie and Un Kull and believe me, I\u2019m not making fun of them) to mama\u2019s room, a converted garage that my daddy had fixed up for mama when he was alive.<\/p>\n Daddy had died one wet and stormy March night a couple of years earlier. I remember mama and her brother coming home early one evening from the hospital where daddy had lay dying. Usually they came home later, when visiting hours were over. That night they came home right after supper with a hang dog look on their faces.<\/p>\n I was in the cellar working on cleaning up grandma\u2019s box of old wooden butter molds, wooden spoons, and potato mashers. Uncle Bob came down the cellar steps with his hand in his pockets, looking as sad as I\u2019ve ever seen him. I could tell that he didn\u2019t know what to say.<\/p>\n \u201cYour daddy didn\u2019t make it.\u201d<\/p>\n I thought the world ended that night. Even all these years later I can\u2019t help but cry as I write that.<\/p>\n Daddy wasn\u2019t around any more to convert any more garages, to plant his flowers and garden or to help out mama, my little brother and me. So here was Annie and Un Kull, which looked to me like a poor substitute for Daddy. But they were all we had. Or so I thought.<\/p>\n While Annie and Un Kull sat and talked with mama, I returned to the driveway to look over their truck and it\u2019s load of whatever it was they had brought with them.<\/p>\n Someone had cut rectangular holes in the sides of the pickup bed and had wedged two by fours down into the holes. The tops of the two by fours were as high as the top of the cab. Cross pieces of rough one by sixes ran between the two by fours, effectively raising the sides of the bed as high as the top of the cab. Matching wooden swinging gates across the back completed the modification.<\/p>\n Several old upside-down wood chairs, and one upside-down wood rocker were jammed into a pile of burlap bags, boxes and an odd assortment of gardening tools, newspaper-wrapped unknowns and you-name-its that I didn\u2019t recognize.<\/p>\n \u201cWho\u2019s the hillbillies?\u201d My neighbor, Billy, a few years older than me, stood behind me surveying the truck and it\u2019s contents.<\/p>\n \u201cMama\u2019s relatives from West Virginia.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat they doing here?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThey said they came to help out.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHow long they staying?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cDon\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n That was really an insignificant conversation, but I remember it because I remember how embarrassed I was. Billy was too old for me to hang around with and he really never meant much to me but my hillbilly relatives and their rusty, junk-filled old pickup sitting in our driveway somehow terribly embarrassed me when Billy stood there asking me about them.<\/p>\n Later that afternoon Annie and Un Kull unloaded their truck and stashed their things here and there around the house and in the cellar.<\/p>\n \u201cLooks like we brought everything we own,\u201d Annie told me as they unloaded the truck and my brother and I looked on. \u201cWell, almost. All the important things anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n Annie thrust her hand into a burlap bag and produced a cast iron skillet.<\/p>\n \u201cThis here skillet\u2019s been seasoned just right. It cooks the best corn pone cakes. You\u2019ll see. Brought some good meal to make \u2019em with too. Doubt we can find meal as good as that \u2018round these parts.\u201d<\/p>\n We had corn pone cakes, spoon bread, and a vast variety of foods we had never heard of before Annie and Un Kull came to stay. Annie cooked, and took care of Mama. Un Kull fixed everything that needed fixing and planted us a huge garden.<\/p>\n One day not long after they arrived Annie pointed out the window box daddy had made for mama. He had built a long shelf outside their bedroom window, about three feet up off the ground, and a long wooden window box for that shelf. When he was alive he planted flowers in the box every spring. Since he had passed, the box had been empty.<\/p>\n \u201cI brought a bag of my special sweet pea seeds and I think they\u2019d do good in that there wind duh box right outside your mama\u2019s bedroom where she can look out and see \u2018em. They\u2019ll cheer her up while she\u2019s gettin\u2019 better.\u201d<\/p>\n I wasn\u2019t sure mama would get better. She had inflammation of the pancreas, as the doctor called it. He said we\u2019d have to see if she\u2019d get better. Annie and Un Kull said mama just had a case of consumption, whatever that was, and they were sure she\u2019d get better.<\/p>\n Annie asked for my help planting her sweet pea seeds. I helped and did as she instructed. Annie watered the box every couple of days and fussed over those sweet peas.<\/p>\n As the sweet peas grew, mama started getting better. I don\u2019t know if it was the sweet peas, Annie\u2019s corn pone cakes and country cooking, or what, but mama started getting better. Within a few weeks the sweet peas trailed all the way to the ground, and Annie wove the vines together to make a solid thicket of sweet peas outside mama\u2019s window.<\/p>\n Those sweet peas were the prettiest shade of pink I\u2019ve ever seen. I don\u2019t remember a sweeter smell than those sweet peas in the early evening when mama sat in Annie\u2019s rocker out there by the sweet peas.<\/p>\n \u201cI think I could sit here forever smelling those sweet peas,\u201d mama said. \u201cEspecially if I\u2019ve got of plate of something Annie cooked. Made with love. That\u2019s what makes her cooking so good.\u201d<\/p>\n Mama continued to get better that summer. Even her sorrow over daddy\u2019s passing seemed to gradually go away.<\/p>\n Me and little brother and Mama thrived that spring, summer, and fall that Annie and Un Kull spent with us. Some evenings Un Kull got out his banjo and we sang. We sang Gospel and some things that I don\u2019t remember. Stuff mama and Annie and Un Kull knew. I do remember that silly song about \u201cDaddy sang base, mama sang tenor, me and little brother joined right in there.\u201d We didn\u2019t have daddy, but we had Annie and Un Kull and mama, and me and little brother joined right in there.<\/p>\n The leaves on the maples were brilliant reds, oranges and yellows the day Annie and Un Kull told us they\u2019d better be leaving soon so they\u2019d be back to the hills and hollers of West Virginia and get their \u201clittle shack ready for winter before the snow flew.\u201d<\/p>\n Mama, little brother, and I stood in the drive and cried the day Annie and Un Kull and their old pickup piled high with all their important things, including Annie\u2019s famous skillet, pulled out and headed for West Virginia. Mama was feeling almost normal. Our house was in good repair and our hearts were glad once again. Annie and Un Kull had worked their magic on us.<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t much more than a couple of years later that I answered the phone late one evening.<\/p>\n \u201cThis here\u2019s Mabel Corlett, neighbor to your Aunt and Uncle back here in West Virginia. I just thought you\u2019d want to know your Aunt and Uncle were killed in a bad accident this afternoon.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat happened?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n \u201cThey were on a country road back in the hills, on their way to tend to some sick old lady. Some drunk t-boned \u2018em and killed \u2018em instantly \u2018cordin to the sheriff. The funeral\u2019s Friday if any of you can come.\u201d<\/p>\n Mama and I made the trip. We learned from Annie and Un Kull\u2019s friends and neighbors, which seemed to be everyone around those parts, that Annie and Un Kull took care of everyone around there. And here we thought it was just us.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever seen more people turn out for a funeral than that one. And the supper at the church afterwards was something I\u2019ll never forget. The cooking was amazing, but I thought Annie\u2019s was better.<\/p>\n \u201cYour aunt and uncle never had a nickel, but they loved on everyone in these parts. The preacher could preach his sermons, but your aunt and uncle lived \u2018em out. Those folks were Jesus in person to everyone they knew. I don\u2019t think I ever believed before they came along. They jus\u2019 made it real to me. How were you related, anyway?\u201d Mabel asked.<\/p>\n \u201cOh, we weren\u2019t,\u201d mama said. They adopted me and my husband a long time ago and told us to call them Annie and Un Kull. They were more like family to us than most of our real relatives.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cHow did you meet them?\u201d Mabel asked.<\/p>\n \u201cThey sort of appeared out of nowhere one day.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t know that, mama,\u201d I said. \u201cThey weren\u2019t really related to us?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNo, son. It\u2019s a long story. I tell it to you on the drive back home.\u201d<\/p>\n When we got back home, I walked over to the window box outside mama\u2019s bedroom window. It was barren after the winter. But spring had come and it was time to plant. Time to plant sweet peas and time to start planting what Annie and Un Kull had taught us.<\/p>\n I found my bag of sweet pea seeds. Annie had told me \u201cLet \u2018em go to seed and save those seeds, child. You\u2019ll be glad you did. You can plant \u2018em yourself. Do it like I showed you and you\u2019ll have all the sweet peas you want.\u201d<\/p>\n Little brother, who couldn\u2019t go to the funeral with mama and me in West Virginia because he couldn\u2019t get off work drove in just as I started digging in the flower box.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat \u2018ya doing, big brother?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cPlanting Annie\u2019s sweet pea seeds. We\u2019re going to have us a crop of pink sweet peas. Mama can sit out here in a few weeks in that rocker we got her for Christmas and smell those sweet peas at the end of the day.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYou sure you can do that?\u201d little brother asked. \u201cNo one could make flowers bloom like Annie.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, I think I can. Annie showed me how to make the flowers bloom. I think you know how too.\u201d<\/p>\n Mama had a thicket of pink sweet peas that summer outside her window. Annie had taught us well. Annie and Un Kull had taught us a lot more than how to make the flowers bloom. They had also taught us how to bloom and how to share a sweet smell with others.<\/p>\n Another day, another time, I\u2019ll tell you more about that summer Annie and Un Kull spent with us. I\u2019ll share some of their stories and some of the stories of the flowers we\u2019ve planted since then that have bloomed and have a sweet smell of their own.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Sam Riviera is a frequent and popular contributor to this blog. Many of his posts on loving your neighbors and ministering to the homeless have been among the most popular articles on this blog. Here is another one of his heart-wrenching and insightful posts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":42703,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2245],"tags":[1336,1394],"class_list":{"0":"post-42690","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-redeeming-life","8":"tag-guest-post","9":"tag-sam-riviera","10":"entry"},"yoast_head":"\n