The View Through a Lace Curtain

Sometimes I wonder if I only view life through a lace curtain of the past. As if I am trying to hide a little from the glare of reality? 

A distant cousin in our Hamer line died last night. She was in her 90's; she was eaten up with cancer; she is out of pain.

Our family is dwindling so fast, partly because of at least three generations of childless couples, including Gordon and me.

We were talking about family history this afternoon, Mama, Unc and I.  William Hamer, the one who built the house in which they live, had ten children. William was one of eight siblings.

Then came the Civil War.  Some of William's girls did not marry. One of his sons died in bachelorhood of yellow fever while carving a new farm out of the Arkansas territory with two of his brothers.

The War itself had not killed the men of our family.  All the eligible men in all of our family branches of the family had signed up to fight.

My uncle told me something new tonight about my forefathers.  James Hamer, who had bought this land sight unseen in 1837 after the Treaty of Dancing Rabbit Creek opened up this section of Mississippi territory, had taught his boys that after every two or three generations, a farm-based family like ours needs to move to new territory and open up a new farm.

The land would be depleted of nutrients after a couple of generations. This was long before manufactured fertilizers, folks.

That is what James had been taught by his father and grandfather.  So, after the death of his wife Ann Flowers Hamer (complications following childbirth), James took his four boys and embarked by wagons to the undeveloped Mississippi territory. 

William was eight, the oldest of the four boys, at the time of that life-changing trip from the Carolinas to Mississippi.

Can you imagine the impact that trip made on an eight year old little boy? Traveling hundreds of miles by wagon with all of the family possessions to a wilderness?

So even after the Civil War devastated our male population in Mississippi, and even after Reconstruction continued to inflict inappropriate torture on a defeated people, William struggled to scrimp and save and buy land in Arkansas and Texas for his boys to get a fresh start on virgin land.

But that seems to be where the emotional scars of The War stopped the Westward movement of that particular line of my family.

The reason that little tidbit of family information is worthy to ponder is because of how I was raised.

I am the sixth generation of our Hamer family to live and work on this farm...the sixth generation of the same adventurous family to stay in one place. England to Jamestown to Maryland to North Carolina to South Carolina to Mississippi...

From movers and shakers to survivors of a devastating war and then a surviving generation of people just hanging on by their fingernails to survive. Those crumbling expectations and experiences of life passed on to the next generation...and then the next. 

I grew up expecting to be the last in line to inherit this farm. By word of mouth and by example of those before me, I learned my role as keeper of the family name and keeper of the family stories and artifacts.

I readily accepted those expectations and added plenty of my own expectations. It can be a bit overwhelming, at times.

I guess, even as a child, I knew that there would be no seventh generation of Hamers with which to share the stories and artifacts and land. It seems I've always known I was the last in my line. (I just realized that while writing this post.)

This distant cousin who died last night was also a Keeper of the Family History. Even in her last week, she talked to my mother about family pictures and her genealogy research.

I think I've hit overload this week on pondering the past, seeking and absorbing information from the my family's past.

Who coined the phrase, "The past steps on the heels of the future?"  It is so profoundly true! How much of our present and future do we allow to be molded by the choices made in previous generations?

Deep stuff, I know. This is an equal part of my emotional makeup and my art.  It is not depression, I promise.

This is little wisp of introspection is like a spring breeze that stirs a lace curtain and tempts one with the sweet promises of the garden beyond.

Tonight I need to take a break from continuing kiln problems and porcelain deadlines and ..... and.... Sweet Gordon is washing all the dishes that had piled up from a dreadfully busy and tiring week.

Happy yellows and funny puppy stores will resume soon, I promise!

The camellias are from friend Emma Crisler's yard in Port Gibson, MS. She is also a Keeper of the Family History in her family.