Journeys

by Gene Shelburne

One night several months before my father died, Nita and I spent a big chunk of an evening on the telephone. First I called my father in Houston. We talked a long time. A bit later my mother-in-law called from Phoenix. I fussed at her for a minute. Then she and Nita spent the rest of the evening catching up on family news.

We have been richly blessed. Both my father and Nita’s mother passed the mid-point of their 80’s, and both of them were healthy, happy, alert, independent. Both of them had the kind of grit you get only by surviving harder days.

Back in the 1920’s, my father recalled, severe drought starved out farmers in the Big Spring/Midland area of Texas. His family loaded up in a covered wagon and made their way to greener pastures near Sherman. They stayed in that area several years, surviving by working for farmers there, until it rained out west and they could head the family wagon homeward again.

In the early 1940’s my mother- in-law loaded her 6 kids into an ancient Chevy and drove west from Oklahoma to join her husband in Arizona. Interstate highways hadn’t been thought of back then, of course, and the wartime speed limit was 35.

Across the badlands of New Mexico, through Salt River Canyon and over the pass at Globe she hauled her brood all by herself. Long stretches of Highway 60 were still unpaved back then, and car engines in those days were famous for overheating and vapor locking on those rugged desert inclines. She knew all that. But she also knew it was the right road for her family’s future, so she dared to take it anyway.

This courageous lady told us on the telephone that night that she soon would be headed east, back to Oklahoma to visit cousins and then through Texas to check up on her kids. This time on a Boeing 737 it will take her less than three hours to cover what took three days in that old Chevy. If her kids didn’t howl at the idea, she would prefer to drive today.

Don’t any of you troublemakers out there be telling my mother-in-law that I’ve been saying nice things about her. If I want her to know that, I’ll tell her myself. But Nita and I and the rest of the clan do feel fortunate indeed that this hardy lady is still around to spice up our lives and to receive our special love on this Mother’s Day.

As the Scriptures say, “Her children rise up and call her blessed.”