Marty Tilley - This Is Me

At the age of three and motherless, Dad and I move into his parents home. My aunt, Dads sister, recently divorced, had moved in as well, with her baby boy. The two of us immediately bonded, like true brother and sister, growing up in this loving, safe environment for many, many years.

In that tiny home, with a gigantic backyard, in proportion to our tiny legs, we played together, climbed trees together, and our imagination soared. Why, we even ran away together, to join the circus!

We, however, did not get very far. Fifty feet. Then, we knocked on our neighbors door, who had the farm with the farm animals, always waving to us whenever grandmother drove by her house. Announcing to her our bold plans of running away and in desperate need of a drink of water, please maam, she obliged and immediately, phoned our grandmother.

The disappointment seen in the eyes of someone you love and hold so dear in your heart, truly does hurt more than any quick pop on your bottom. And we never spoke of running away again.

Years pass, and Dad offers me a tiny glimpse into his inner thoughts, which was a very rare occurrence. Right after the move and burial of my mother, he allowed himself only one week to mourn. At age twenty-four, now widowed, and with a stubborn child to raise, he knew he must return to some type of normalcy. So, he returned to work.

He had, after all, promised my mother, as she lay dying, he would take care of me. He has never let her down.

I remember very little of the farmhouse we called home, while my mother was alive. The home had no bathroom. None did, in the 50s, in rural America. I, thankfully, still wore diapers.

Happiness is what I do feel with the memories I recall tiny kittens scratching my arms, while I stuff them into my baby stroller; little ducklings, dyed purple, circling my feet, as I squat for a photo, in my Easter best.

Quite poignantly, and somewhat foretelling, I recall us leaving a church service. Giggling, I sail through the air, leaping from the churchs highest step, into the arms of a teenage girl. I can still see her face. Not my mothers the girls.

Coming from strong genes, I continue to flourish, like my Dad, still working each and every day at 86. My maternal great-grandfather, born in the late 1800s, began a logging and sawmill business with a team of mules; with no one questioning his sanity whatsoever years later, as he spat tobacco juice on the floorboard of his brand-spanking new Cadillac, and my paternal great-grandmother, cooking over a wood-stove, birthing babies, and working in the fields, alongside her husband.

Living to be almost 100, she was baptized, in her late 80s, in a bathtub. St. Peter had a huge smile on his face when Ma Nettie appeared at the pearly gates. Dipping for as long as I can even recall, I believe the first question she probably asked upon arrival was quite simple: Where do we get our snuff?

And to this very day, I still use an old snuff can to cut out my angel biscuits, in remembrance of Ma.

So many ancestors, with unique strength and resilience, and I find that I am, thankfully, becoming one of them. This journey has opened my eyes to the plasticity within each of us, if we allow the growth to take root.

I understand we all have our crosses we must bear. Some people decide to bypass, ignore certain crosses because the pain is just too difficult. And I cannot judge, nor will I, the personal struggles or injustices an individual may encounter in this fragile world we live in.

I do know my own mother, after delivering a full-term baby boy, a mere eighteen months after my miraculous birth, turned her back as they brought him, lifeless, a few hours later.

One year passes and she joins him.