Upside Down

I’ve written a lot about my love of life and how much fun I’ve had with my family.  There have been lots of laughs and giggles, interspersed with only a few sad times.

This is one of the sad times, but we may share a laugh or two along the way.

Mom would have loved the laughs.

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Wanda Lee Corn was born on September 17, 1926 in a pea patch.  Her parents, Clyde and Clara Mae (Mitchell) Corn had moved onto the place with their six children.  I don’t know why they called it the pea patch for sure, but I think it’s safe to assume there was a patch of peas involved.

Yes, I’m that smart.

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Mom brought the kids’ number to seven.  When Pop Corn got his first look at his newborn daughter, he chuckled and said, “Would you look at that little pug-ugly?”

The name stuck and, although Mom tried half-heartedly to shed the nickname, she remained Pug to many who knew her.

There would eventually be 13 little Corns.  Times were hard at the tail-end of the Great Depression, and Pop and Granny Corn worked hard to care for their brood.  When they lived in another place, the Butler County house, Pop depended on cutting firewood by hand and selling it to make ends meet.  That’s a tough thing to do when the ends don’t seem to want to meet. 

One day Mom saw a cloud of dust on the road.  A truck was coming to pick up a load of firewood.

Pop Corn smiled and said, “Good news, kids, we get to eat tonight.”

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That may have been a bit of an exaggeration, but only a little bit.  To get a roof over the family’s head before winter, the men built a house using rough-cut, green lumber.  As the boards dried, they shrunk and gaps formed.  Mom woke one morning to find snow sifting through the cracks and covering the bed she shared with several sisters.

The family would endure many tough times, including the loss of some little ones who didn’t survive infancy.  One of Mom’s saddest memories was waking up one morning to find her dad crying.  He had stayed up all night trying to save her baby brother who was battling the whooping cough.

When the little one stopped breathing, Pop broke down.

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Despite the hardships, there were many more good times than bad.  Pop found a way to make a little fun, even in the midst of disaster.  One year, he took the kids down to their flooded cotton field.  The poor little cotton plants had drowned as they tried to sprout under water.

Pop said, “Dive in, kids.  Might as well swim.  That’s all we’re gonna get off the farm this year.”

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Mom’s older sister taught her to sew and she went at it full-throttle, making clothes out of flour sacks for her and her siblings.

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At another home, there were sixteen people living in a four-room shack.  It was Christmas.  One of Mom’s sisters was named Irene, but Pop Corn called her his little farm-boy Pete.  Mom was helping entertain the younger siblings in one room while Pop and Aunt Pete were in the other room, being secretive.  It was time for Santa to arrive. 

There weren’t many presents but those few were distributed under the tree.  Like the gifts, the decorations on the tree were hand made.  Soon all was done, the last step was to light the candles decorating the tree.

Now, lighting candles in a dead evergreen is a tradition that I never understood, but everyone did it in those days. 

One of the flames came in contact with dry pine needles and the tree erupted in fire.  Pop tried to put it out but it flared up and, in a final attempt to save their house, Pop ordered Aunt Pete to open the door as he grabbed the flaming tree.  He managed to squeeze his bulk and the burning tree out the door and into the yard.

Somehow, someone in the other room mistook the sounds of the firefight for a clue that Santa had visited.  The little ones came out of the room to find Pop and Aunt Pete covered in soot, the room filled with smoke, and a glowing tree outside the door.

Pop coughed and laughed and said something like, “Well kids, I promised you a Christmas you’ll never forget.”

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The school Mom attended didn’t have a high school, so she ended her education after the eighth grade…but only for about a year.  The family moved to a farm just north of Clarkton, Missouri and her older sisters pushed her to go back to school.  Because of her loving family, Mom became the first of them to receive a high school diploma.

She met Berline Matthews and, after a whirlwind romance, they were wed.  The union was blessed with Pam, Cheryle (Chickie to most), and Scott.

Yep, me.

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Mom continued her hard-working ways, running Matthews Mill while Dad did more of the hands-on stuff.  I’d say hers was hands-on too, as she took the three of us kids with her most days.  Despite the hectic schedule of running a business while caring for three kids, Wanda managed to enjoy herself.  Of course, working with several young men in their teens and twenties was an adventure in its own right.

One of the youngsters, Johnny Long, asked her for a bucket to milk one of the cows they were holding for shipment.  Mom went back to work only to be interrupted again by Long, who came into the mill holding the bucket, water sloshing out of it.

Johnny’s hair was mussed, his clothing disheveled and he was covered in dirt.  He said, mournfully, “Pug, I think it was the wrong kind of cow.”

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Later Dad started a trucking company and they sold the mill.  Again, Mom did all the paperwork and tried to balance the bank account.  At some point in there, she started working at the Sterling Aluminum plant north of Malden.

Two full-time jobs and raising three kids should be enough work for anybody, right?  Nope.  Every fall she added picking cotton to her workload.  Again, she took us with her.  I remember eating a lot of bologna sandwiches and moon pies in the shade of a convenient tree…or just a cotton wagon if nothing else was available.  Oh, and we had a bottle of Pepsi too, which we four shared with Granny Corn.

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And, despite all that, she continued sewing, making, or repairing clothing.

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By 1967, when Pam married and moved out, Mom started thinking about achieving a life-long dream.  She made the decision to add something else to her workload.  Mom started taking college classes in the evening.

Yes, after a long day at work, then feeding us and cleaning the house, Mom could often be found sitting quietly in the living room, studying.

One day, Chickie found Mom alone in a room, crying.  She asked what was wrong.  The factory had just switched her to night shift.

“How will I go to school?  When will I study?”

That was one of the few times Mom ever broke down.  She knew well the two words that are the true secret to success.

“Don’t quit.”

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Mom didn’t quit.  She kept going, taking a few hours at a time, earning an Associate’s degree, then a Bachelor’s, then a Master’s.  As she approached her Doctorate, I’m not sure what happened.  Maybe she wanted to leave the groundbreaking-woman job to someone else in the family.  With just the dissertation to go, she decided to quit.  I guess she did know what that word meant after all, but I’m pretty sure that was the only time in her life she ever actually applied it.

Mom taught hundreds of area kids, many of them while she was the fifth and sixth grade remedial reading teacher for Malden Elementary.  Not long after Annie and I moved back to the area, we attended a football game of our oldest son.  Mom and I were walking along the track beside the field when a huge, bear of a man stepped out of the dark and engulfed her in his arms.  Only her laughter told me she wasn’t being crushed to death.

She introduced me and he held out a huge paw for me to shake.  “I love your mom,” he said.  “If it wasn’t for her, I never would have learned how to read.”

Yeah, that was my mom.

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Dad passed away in their 55th year of marriage and, after a time of adjustment, Mom kept going, for the kids, and the grandkids, and the great grandkids.

The years rolled by and Mom grew older.  She still didn’t know how to quit and refused to surrender to age.  Many people remember seeing her walking several miles every day.  Her max was four miles but gradually dwindled until, finally, she had to stop, only walking her dog, Poochie, for exercise.

Her 90^th birthday approached and we made plans to celebrate.

Carolyn Aden was the coordinator for the Run for Your Life race.  It was held several years, right around the time of Mom’s birthday.  In fact, one or another of my sons had won the overall championship for every running distance for every year it was held. 

Like everyone in this area, she knew Mom so, when Carolyn asked about her, I told her we were preparing to celebrate the big nine-oh.  She quickly said, “That’s the day we’ll do the race!”

Mom was a little surprised when all my sons showed up, as well as my sister Pam’s boys and Mom’s brother, Pat.  My sons won the 5K, 10K, and half-marathon races, and Mom walked a mile.  At the award ceremony Carolyn recognized her with a special award and everyone sang “Happy Birthday”.

Annie had found a woman who made cakes to order and had an idea to help make Mom’s special day even more special.  We arrived at our church’s Family Life Center where Mom saw the cake shaped like a sewing machine, surrounded by cupcakes.  The cupcakes were iced with cotton boles and ears of corn.

Mom loved it.

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Mom had never stopped sewing.  She made or repaired clothing for a huge portion of the area population.  She made everything from wedding dresses to quilts.  It’s been estimated that she made somewhere in the neighborhood of 1000 quilts.

Mom may not have had a perfect grasp of the English language, but she made sure her kids all knew perfect sewing terminology.  A hole in the knee of your pants was a tear, but when a seam gives out, it’s a rip.  A blanket is made of one layer of cloth, whereas a cover made of a layer of batting sewn between two outside layers is a quilt.

She took a quilt she’d made for my youngest son, Patrick, with her to the nursing home.  When someone would say, “Let me put your blanket on you,” she never failed to correct them.

“It’s not a blanket; it’s a quilt!”

It got to be a joke between Chickie, Mom, and me.  “Here, Mom, I’ll pull up your blanket.”

It never failed to elicit a response, “O-o-o-oh, you know better than that.”

My nephew, Shawn, works in Alabama for a company named Nucor.  A few years back they heard about Mom’s quilting and asked if she could make a couple for them.  They wanted to auction them off for cancer research.

As a cancer survivor, Mom was happy to do so.  When the auction started no one was surprised that Mom’s quilts were among the most popular items.  The bidding kept going up, and up, and up.  Pam told me the two quilts eventually raised $53,000.00 for cancer research.

Not bad for a little farm girl named Pug.

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One of my sons, Travis, texted me a few days ago with a great idea to honor Mon at her funeral.  “I think we should all bring one quilt that we love from her.  Just see how many people we can get to do that!”

I responded, “It would bring Malden to a standstill!  The town would be blanketed…er…quilted!”

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Mom had to give up sewing when her vision finally got too bad.  When her health made living in her split-level house dangerous, we moved her into the little house next door to Annie and me.  I worked nights then, so I would go down every morning and fix her breakfast and give her the prescribed medications before going to bed.  Chickie would come by during the day and sometimes stay for hours, sharing stories and laughs.  Annie would go over every night for the evening necessities.  Pam would come up from her home in Arkansas whenever time permitted.  We would all drop by now and then just to say hi.

There were many times when two, three, or all four of us would be there, laughing and talking.

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When Mom’s health deteriorated to the point where she needed 24-hour care, she begrudgingly let us move her to the Malden Nursing Home, where she found several old friends already there, and made some dear new ones.

Toward the end, she stopped talking, then couldn’t get up.

On Saturday, August 24, Pam and Chickie, and I were in her room talking to her.  There were a few sad moments, but we shared a lot of laughs, as Mom lay there quietly, not responding, but I’m sure she could hear us.

My eldest sister’s phone rang.  It was one of Pam’s childhood friends, one of the thousands of people who feel a special bond with Mom.  Pam held her phone so Mom could hear as Little Janie Little began to sing, “I love you, a bushel and a peck…”

Mom’s face didn’t change, but she started to try to speak, or was it…sing?

After Janie finished and we wiped away our tears, we went back to talking about the good times.

Moments later, I said, “I haven’t seen her take a breath in a while.”

And just like that, she was gone.

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I can see Mom stepping toward the pearly gates.  St. Peter starts to greet her when he’s interrupted by Dad holding the gate, calling, “Hey, Wanda, I’ve been waiting for you!”  In the background Pop Corn’s voice calls out, “Would you look at my little Pug Ugly!” and Granny Corn says, simply, “Hi, Honey.”

I’ve wracked my brain trying to express what I think about my mom, then I realized, Pam has already said it.  When Mom moved into the nursing home, someone hung a wreath that Pam had bought for her.  The multi-colored wreath has a little sign on it that says, “Did you ever notice that mom, spelled upside down, is wow?”

Yeah.  That’s my Mom.  Wow.

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