Jenny Sturgill - Against the Wind: How I survived my life with Grandma

AGAINST THE WIND

How I Survived My Life With Grandma

by

Jenny Sturgill

AGAINST THE WIND

By Jenny Sturgill

ISBN: 978-0-69257-736-3 (ebook)

Copyright 2015 Jenny Sturgill.

All rights reserved.

No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or used in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

First Printing October 2015

Williams Printing Co.

242 University Drive

Prestonsburg, Kentucky 41653

1-800-765-2464

Printed in the United States of America

For my family

Table of Contents

Acknowledgement

My deepest gratitude to Mary Rosenblum for her genuine encouragement, patience, and guidance, and whose expert knowledge she most generously shared.

Thanks to my husband, Willie, for being such an insightful first editor and for always being so encouraging and supportive.

Introduction

I awoke early that morning, got out of bed, and looked through the window. It was still dark outside. I stood there with the curtains parted and thought about the submission I'd sent to Page&Spine Magazine. I'd been looking for a response every few hours since I'd sent it in a few days ago. I knew sometimes it took a long time for a response but I couldn't help checking my email. I so hoped they would accept my story. The editor had said she would be interested in a piece about retiring to writing and they actually paid money for the submissions that were published. It wasn't the money. It was the idea of having my story published in a real magazine. I had just finished a writing course and this was my first submission. I'd been warned that rejections were usual and to get used to it, because most submissions were rejected. It was a story about my retirement from a long career in nursing, and how I'd gone on to pursue writing in my retirement years. I'd missed my nursing career a lot until I started this new venture of writing, and I had put my heart and soul into that story.

Soon it was daylight and time go downstairs to get my morning coffee. I took my favorite cup from the cabinet and poured myself a fresh cup of coffee. Sinking down into my easy chair by the window in the sun room I opened my email, which was crowded with the usual advertisements and junk mail. Then I scrolled down and found one from the editor of Page&Spine Magazine. My heart almost stopped. This was it, the rejection. I stared at the screen for a long, anxious moment. Then I took a deep breath, squeezed my eyes shut, and clicked it open. With my heart pounding in my temples I opened my eyes and read: "We'd like to accept your story for publication." My eyes widened and I let out a yelp of joy, jumped up, and ran to tell my husband, Willie. "I'm being published!"

I threw my arms around his waist and almost knocked him down. Quickly I phoned everyone I knew with the good news. I grinned from ear to ear as I relayed the message to my family and friends, who bombarded me with good wishes and excitement. Then I thought of Grandma. If she had still been alive, how would she have reacted? Would she finally have been proud me? I thought of her negative attitude and could only shake my head. I'd doubt if she would have reacted with any kind of joy. She was a bitter woman who had never seemed to find joy in anything. I remember growing up in all those rundown rental houses and when I look around and see all the nice comfortable things that surround me I often shudder at how my life could have turned out.

My story is about my struggle to grow up, living with my eccentric grandmother. I don't tell this to discredit her, but to show that we can overcome the hardships and dysfunctions that swirl around us as we grow up, that we can emerge with enough wisdom to understand how relationships work and give of ourselves to others. This book is meant to be an encouraging journey through some difficult times. It's a story of survival, resilience, and triumph.

Angel in my Pocket

I was lost.

That is my very first memory -- of standing in a cornfield on a river bank close to a swollen, raging river. Tears are running down my cheeks and dripping off my chin and I'm shivering in the cold rain that peppers my face and bare arms.

I didn't know where that memory came from. I must have been very young, maybe two or three.

One day, my favorite Aunt Jo called me to her and said, "Jenny, come sit with me for awhile, and let me tell you a story." I sat down beside her on the brown worn sofa. I'd just recovered from a serious illness, diagnosed as pneumonia by the old women in the community. I had had a high fever. I had been weak, and unable to raise my head off my pillow, and I drifted in and out of consciousness. With no money for medical care, we relied on home remedies for treatment. The neighbors came each night to pray and keep vigil until daylight.

And I had gotten better.

I had barely escaped death.

"Jenny, this isn't the first time. I believe you have an angel in your pocket," Aunt Jo said, as she settled in with her arm around me to tell me the story.

She told me that my cousin Edward, who was five years older than me, and our grandma and I had lived on a riverbank when I was about two years old, in a rundown rickety shack of a house that slumped from age and had posts like stilts that supported the backside. Tall corn stalks grew along the riverbank, and a two lane blacktop road ran in front of the house. Above the road loomed a steep mountain covered with trees, boulders, bare patches of soil, and long wide gullies carved by the rain. It was prone to mudslides.

The thunder rolled, lightning danced along the mountaintops, and the clouds burst, pelting rain against the windows and rooftop day and night for days. The water rushed down the hillside, creating new trenches, and pouring water into the ditch beside the road, until it swelled over onto the road, washing away pieces of blacktop on its way to the swollen river. Carrying mud along with it, it turned the river a coffee colored brown.

It was early in the day, washday for Grandma, who was boiling our clothes on the stove. Grandma was a stern woman, quick to anger, stoop-shouldered from the burden of losing her husband to a mine accident, raising five children of her own until adulthood, then having two more dropped in her lap to raise after they had left. She wore a mask of bitterness and rarely had anything good to say about anyone or anything. Edward, my seven-year-old cousin, stood looking out the back window watching logs, small sheds, and debris roll down the swollen murky river.

The mudslide came quickly and brutally, buckling our house as if it were made of matchsticks, crumbling walls, dumping mud, trees and rocks onto the top and front of the house, so that it slipped dangerously close to the swollen river.

Neighbors came from up and down the road, carrying shovels, pushing wheelbarrows, and offering their muscles to help. Grandma knew everyone from near to far, having lived in that same area for years. Strangers were unheard of in that little rural community. There was no reason for strangers to stop by; there was nothing to stop for. That's just how it was; everyone knew everyone else and their business.

Grandma and Edward weren't scalded by the pot of boiling water as everything tilted and fell, but I was nowhere to be found. I'd been asleep in my crib toward the front of the house when the mudslide hit.