This is my first childhood memory: of “Miss Clark” giving me a bath in her kitchen sink while she fixed dinner. The chug became a roar, and a train rolled past the back of the garden. We could hear the wheels go thunk against the track.
The thunk was joined with a tap of Miss Clark's foot, matching its rhythm. She sang, “There's not a friend like the one named Jesus, no not one, no not one.”
After that bath, she probably put my hair on rollers so it would hang in curls by dinner. She called me her “Barbie doll” because she loved to fix hair, and I had shoulder-length black hair by the time I was a year old. She sang the whole time she fixed my hair.
Miss Clark and her husband raised ten children on their farm. Her yard was full of flowers sprouting from old tire beds. She planted whatever flower seeds were on sale. Chickens pecked in the coop, livestock was in the barn, and I sometimes found peacock feathers in her yard. Once, she raised the runt of a pig litter in her bathtub, until it was big enough to survive in the barn.
Miss Clark's heart was full of songs. The kitchen was the busiest room of her farmhouse, and she hummed from canning to cooking. She was a babysitter/surrogate grandma whose home was my haven, especially when my parents divorced and my real world crashed.
Her home was a place where families were happy, the table was full of good food, and dinner conversation was fun. After we ate and cleaned the kitchen, weather permitting, we went to her living room — swings and gliders in the yard where we could see the flowers, feel the breezes, hear the chickens, and sometimes watch the trains. Here was a refuge where weary souls could rest.
Miss Clark died last month at the age of 96, the morning after Christmas.
Once while Miss Clark worked through a stack of ironing, I asked her, “What did you major in?”
She stopped her song, looked at me, smiled, and answered, “Washin' and ironin', Mary Pat.” Married at 14, mother of 3 children before she was 18, her life was spent full of hard work, babies, and always, always music. Her singing carried her family through peaks and valleys.
Miss Clark's last son has Down’s syndrome. When Jackie was born, doctors told her to put him in a home and count on him not living to be twenty. Miss Clark took him home, loved on him and sang to him, as she did all her children, grandchildren, and surrogate grandchildren like me. Jackie loved school and went to a special school every single day. When I was in early grade school, he was in his early twenties and proudly brought home his school papers. Our tests had comparable problems.
Miss Clark never complained. Everything she had came from God, and she always knew He could take whatever happened and use it. She took whatever God gave her and made something wonderful. The simplest, meager pantry could produce a feast and her scrap bag begat many beautiful quilts. She canned and put up so much food one year that the floor to her pantry collapsed. They reinforced the floor, and she kept canning by the dozens of quarts.
The last decade she lived on her farm, her husband was no longer able to keep up the work. Jackie did. With his mother's supervision, he mowed the yards, planted the gardens, and tended the livestock. Jackie helped his parents live on their farm ten more years. He is now in his fifties, lives in a group home, and still goes to school every day. Miss Clark's TLC is what made the difference in his life.
I saw her a few times after they had to sell their farm. When we were alone, she would grab my hand and tell me, “Mary Pat, never forget that I love you.”
In the years since I went to her farmhouse, I've had good teachers, bad ones, and a few great ones. They taught me many things from books and helped me exercise my mind. None of them, however, match what I learned from the lady who majored in washin' and ironin' and sang the songs in her heart.
My daughter has a rose-colored double wedding ring quilt Miss Clark made for me before I married. That's the only tangible thing I have from Miss Clark.
When we bought our house in the middle of a small city, we didn't want the house because it was in the center of noise and bustle. Then I went into the backyard. There was a flower-covered arbor, a small garden wall, and room behind it for a garden. Swings and gliders adorned the yard. A former owner had moved from her small farm into town, and spent 35 years transforming her backyard into a retreat. We had to buy the house because of the yard.
Now, when I stand at my own kitchen sink and look out our window in the middle of town, I sometimes see clothes hanging from a line, the flower-covered arbor, and the small wall. My children never took baths in the kitchen sink, but they do have a secret garden that reminds me of a farm I once loved.
This week, Miss Clark sang her way to a garden and home the likes of which I can never imagine.
As I look out my own kitchen window, I remember that first kitchen window, the gardens, and the soul-touching music. That window view is the closest I've come to imagining heaven.
I'm sure an occasional train rolls through and I can hear her, tapping her toe, bouncing a baby on her hip, and stirring all kinds of dishes on the stove for dinner all while she sings and entertains a kitchen full of children:
There's not a friend like the one named Jesus,
No not one, no not one.
None else can heal all our soul's diseases,
No not one, no not one.
Jesus knows all about our struggles,
He will guide until the day is done.
Her day isn't done. It has just begun.
Copyright 2005 by Mary Biever. All rights reserved.
Mary Biever is a homeschooling mother of two who publishes encouragement articles and runs Encouragement Workshops For Today's Families.
This article was adapted from one of her columns.
