Being Domestic

I have found myself domestic lately. I have always loved to cook and do things motherly and but I am spending time learning how to do things like fondant cakes and upholstery. This do-it-yourself attitude and lifestyle is very much accounted for by my MeMaw.

She passed my junior year of college. She was diagnosed with an aggressive form of lung cancer and was gone so quickly that I never had the opportunity to say goodbye or see her before she left. The funeral was over Thanksgiving and somehow I sang at the service. It was by far one of the most difficult things I have done in life. I have never met a stronger woman than LaNeil Chesney.

As a girl, I would travel to spend a week with her each summer in Dallas. I remember everyday so vividly. I would sit in her recliner and watch Grease and eat bologna and mayonnaise sandwiches garnished with her homemade sweet pickles. We would go to the fabric store and I’d choose patterns and fabrics for more outfits than a girl could dream and she taught me how to sew and surge beautiful garments. Her hands were crippled with arthritis and when she was younger than I am now, she was told that she would never walk again. It wasn’t long after that she was back on the tennis court not just walking but running.

I slept next to her bed every night. I outgrew the cot she had when I was about twelve and would make a palette in that special place, just next to her. I woke there Christmas mornings as a child and even as a college girl, that was still my place.

Today, at the grocery store I was looking for a sifter. I found one and started to cry. I do that more often than I would like to admit thinking of her. All these years later, I still miss her as much as I did immediately following her death. In one of the glass front cabinets in my kitchen, on the top shelf the is a ceramic pitcher with strawberries on it that says "LaNeil’s Kitchen". I know my husband thinks it is unattractive, but that is it’s place, watching over me as I prepare meals as my MeMaw taught me.

If there were any task she needed done, she did it herself be it carpentry, lawn care, gardening, cooking, sewing, mending, you name it. While battling lung cancer she was still mowing her own lawn. She had been a widow my whole life, as my Grandaddy died the summer I was born and she was used to taking care of herself. My uncle had to have a crew come when the lawn needed mowing before my MeMaw could get out and do it herself.

I wish my husband and daughter could meet her. In so many ways, I am hoping that the person she was is the wife, mother and grandmother I will be. She taught me more than the domestic life, she taught me strength, tenacity, resilience and work ethic through her superhuman example.