Sloan: Aunt Edna summed up Mother best

I hope you have or had as wonderful of a mother as blessed my life.

link Wendel Sloan

A framed photo of her and my dad, who died at 71 in 1990 from working around asbestos at an east Texas steel mill, greets me every morning in the living-room as the TV shows the latest atrocities committed by idiots who think their God wants them to kill everyone less ignorant.

Daddy, in pajamas on the couch during his final months of labored breathing, has his usual sly smile while Mother, in a long-sleeve blouse and modest skirt, has her usual shy smile.

When she died at 92 in 2010 after raising six kids (plus grandkids and great grandkids) in the Pentecostal faith, I had never seen Mother in jeans or shorts. Even gardening, doing housework or playing ball with us in the cow pasture, she always wore long skirts or dresses.

Despite not wearing lipstick or makeup, Mother took pride in her appearance. While I would hop in the car with what I had on — cutoffs, T-shirts, flip-flops, etc. — for trips to the grocery store, garage sales or to nearby relatives, mother always dressed in her Sunday best.

This was literally true for the 10-mile trips across White Oak Bottom through foggy evergreens to Lake Chapel House of Prayer.

Mercifully, because of homework, she did not make her kids, grandkids and great grandkids go to all four lengthy, weekly (Sunday morning, and Sunday, Thursday and Saturday nights) services with her. I averaged about twice a week.

While the hellfire and brimstone messages and speaking-in-tongues induced guilt in a guileless adolescent, the thumping bass, guitars and drums made my spirit soar on the backbeat of a beastly rhythm.

Aunt Edna, her bubbly younger sister and nurturing Pentecostal preacher in California, summed up Mother by telling me, “Your mom used to leave the table hungry to make sure you kids did not.”

I would give up everything I own if Mother could drag me to that country church one more time.

Contact Wendel Sloan at [email protected]