Mamaw is gone, but she left many priceless gifts

There are too few of her left in these hills and hollows who can be found sitting on the porch of a summer evening, breaking beans and waving to passers-by.

Too few folks with perpetually warm stoves, worn Bibles, and a standing invitation to come and stay anytime. Too few women with a legacy that could inspire so many columns.

There aren't many people who can say they were blessed to have their great-grandmothers as long as I knew mine. And since her passing Dec. 7, my family and I have been sorting through the gifts Ethel Stanley Russell left us, but not the kind you wrap in expensive paper or return the day after Christmas.

These gifts are priceless.

SHE GAVE US her stories about life on Ramsey Ridge in Dickenson County, and a home place she described with such beauty I thought she must have been exaggerating until my family drove up there for a picnic, and I saw that she was right.

When she had a willing listener, her stories came alive, like those she told about riding a horse to the Big Oak School (where her brother Roley was the teacher), playing croquet on Saturdays, and her brother Bill preaching a kitten's funeral while she and her sister Eva stood by and wailed with grief.

We have her recipe book, which speaks of the role that food played in how Mamaw loved people.

A MEAL AT HER house was akin to a big, warm hug. Just about everyone who knew her remembers sitting down to her table for soup beans and cornbread. At Christmas we enjoy her hot cheese cookies and Russian tea. She knew that fried apple pies were my favorite, and taught me how to make them.

We have her Bible, a symbol of her faith with its weary, annotated pages. There, as well as in her recipe book, she carefully recorded births, weddings and passings in
handwritings as delicate as lace. Neatly clipped poems with themes of motherhood and memories are tucked between the pages.

We have traditions that were in place long before I was born. A cedar Christmas tree was the favorite at her house, where the whole family spent the night on Christmas Eve. On Christmas morning, she was the first to rise to begin cooking a breakfast of gravy, biscuits, and tenderloin.

WE HAVE HER work ethic. She taught us how to garden, how to milk the cow, how to gather the best eggs. In the fall months, she worked well into the night helping to make molasses and grade tobacco.

We have her art, including the pictures she painted as well as crocheted afghans, doilies and tablecloths. Her letters read like poetry.

My generation is obsessed with the number of degrees we can accumulate, the size of our vehicles, and how many digits we can add to our salaries. Ethel Stanley Russell didn't have a degree, she never even learned to drive, and the work that she did never resulted in a salary. Still, she left an inheritance that I wouldn't trade for the world.

IF I CAN CLAIM just a small percentage of her wisdom, a touch of her compassion, and an ounce of her rapport with friends and strangers alike, I will consider myself well on the road to success.

I smile to remember how much she would worry at Christmas. "I never know what to get anybody, especially the grandchildren," she'd say. She sensed from our store-bought education, fancy cars, and new-fangled electronics that we are living in a time when people are hard to please.

What she gives to us this Christmas, in addition to all those gifts I mentioned, is the challenge to follow in her footsteps.

And though I could never begin to fill her shoes, my New Year's resolution - for this year and every year thereafter - is to try to wear them.

Written by ggdaughter Amy Clark.