She had red hair, blue eyes, and she was beautiful.
And she was different.
Not like anyone I had ever met before.
I remember we were at a bar.
She was sitting on the barstool, I was standing.
We were talking.
At some point in our exchange of nervously structured sentences, I must have told her that I really liked her.
Then she must have said something back to the effect of “I really like you too.”
Because then I remember laughing awkwardly and saying out loud back to her, “someday you may not like me, someday you may change your mind.”
Why would I say such a thing?
Why didn’t I just go on and accept the moment we were having?
Because I knew.
I knew the truth.
The truth about me no one ever talks about.
I am just like my mother.
Fast forward twenty-four years.
It’s the summer of ’21.
Two thousand twenty-one.
She is blonde now.
And of course, her eyes are still blue.
She is still very beautiful.
She is still not like anyone I have ever met before.
And we are married now.
I am standing far out on the dock fishing.
She is kneeling down digging in the garden up closer to the house.
My mother is standing behind her as works on her knees digging with the hand tool.
And my mother is questioning what and how she is doing it.
After a time of this, she stands up.
“UUUUGGGGHHHHH,” she yells out loud so I can hear her from the dock.
“CURT! YOU ARE JUST LIKE YOUR MOTHERRRRR!”…holding the “ER” sound for a while.
“WOOOOGGGGHHH!”
There on the dock, I turned towards the loud voice.
I managed a faint smile as in my mind I returned to that barroom twenty-four years ago.
Out loud I said to myself.
“I told you.”
“I tried to warn you.”
I still really like her.
I think she still really likes me though sometimes I am not so sure why.
I am, just like my mother.
And the nice thing is…
She is just like her mother too.
And she loves my mother.
And I love her mother too.
And since I am just like my mother,
She must love me too.
Postscript:
For my birthday, my kids got me a subscription to this writing prompt called Storyworth that on a weekly basis sends me a topic to write about and I think at the end of the year compiles the writings in a book, but they also thought it might provide me some “Musings” material. The topics are questions like “Have you ever won anything,” “did you have a favorite teacher in middle school,” or “what is your idea of perfect happiness.” Last week the challenge was “Are you more like your father or your mother? In what ways.” This is my first public post from those weekly writings.
It is a rainy Friday evening as guests arrive early for what is to be a surprise event at Clyde’s Restaurant in Ashburn, Virginia. The guests filter into the restaurant and begin to fill the rows of long tables in the private reserved dining room. Finally, Cookie arrives bringing her mom Dorothy, the guest of honor.
Dorothy is surprised as she enters the room and takes her place at the head of the table.
Her seemingly ageless face has a big smile and guests take advantage of the photo opportunities.
Dorothy Lockett looks beautiful and classy as always.
Today is Dorothy Lockett’s 94th birthday.
She is known to many as Mother, Mother Lockett, and Momma, all truly terms of endearment for one incredibly special person.
Before the meal, with the guests now settled into their seats at the tables, a blessing is offered by one of the guests:
“Our father we thank you so much for this opportunity to gather tonight to celebrate a woman who has lived life well.
Thank you oh God for what you have done in the life of Dorothy Lockett yesterday,
Thank you for where you have her today.
Thank you oh God for where you are taking her.
Thank you for the deposits of love that you have made in her life, that she has been so willing and so bountifully willing to share with so many of us.
Those of us that she has adopted into her family as she has shared her motherly love and wisdom, and council and discipline with.
God, we give you thanks for this life.
God, we thank you for Cookie and all the grandkids, thank you oh God for their willingness to share their mother with so many of us.
And now oh God, even in this season of life, we pray oh God that you would continue to pour a sense of purpose into Mother’s life.
That you would continue to keep her body.
That you would strengthen her spirit.
That you would provide her continually with opportunities to continue to minister.
God, we thank you for this woman of God.
We pray oh God, that you would bless this food, that you bless it for the health of our bodies.
And even as we celebrate oh God, we pray that you would allow our conversations and celebration to honor You.
Thank you for Dorothy Lockett.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen”
Amen.
That Blessing was delivered four years ago by a guest at Dorothy’s 94th birthday. Unfortunately I don’t know the name of the man who authored that prayer.
This day, August 11, 2021, we celebrate Dorothy Lockett’s 98th birthday.
To my family Dorothy has always been “Momma.”
She has celebrated many Christmas Eves with Kim and I and our kids and family and friends.
She has sat at the “family” table at one of our weddings.
She even made the trip to western Pennsylvania to attend Kim’s mom’s 80th birthday party.
And though in the more recent years we haven’t been able to have those times to share together, we know we are all still family.
Dorothy was born on this day in the year 1923 in Meridian, Mississippi.
One Christmas Eve, after everyone had either gone home or gone to sleep, Dorothy told Kim and I the story of how she met James Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman, the three young Civil Rights workers who would end up murdered not far from Meridian, while working at the Star Theater. The Star Theatre was an African American only theater.
One day the three young men, who worked for COFO, the Council of Federated Organizations and had an office close by, came to the box office window where Dorothy was working. Since the theater was black attendance only and Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman were both white from up north, Dorothy didn’t know what to do.
So she called her manager and explained there were two white boys and a black out front and they wanted to come to see a movie and what should she do?
Her manager, who was white, said “let them in Dorothy.”
And so, after that, on days when they didn’t go out in the field to help register blacks to vote, the three young COFO volunteers would come to the movies at Dorothy’s Star Theatre.
On June 21, 1964, members of the Klu Klux Klan assassinated Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman. The Klansmen shot them and buried their bodies in a dam. They weren’t found for two months.
Dorothy would work at the Star Theatre for twenty-six years. Her experience with managing the theatre’s deposits landed her a position as a bank teller at the Farmers and Merchant Bank where she worked until she retired and moved up to Northern Virginia to live with Cookie.
Dorothy also claims to have been the first African-American crossing guard in Meridian and I don’t doubt she was.
Dorothy’s story of the theatre and the young civil rights workers is only one example of the experiences that Dorothy had growing up, living, and working in Mississippi that shaped her life and gave her the gifts that the rest of us now benefit from. With wisdom and grace, and her strong faith in God, she rose above the hatred and exemplified love.
“Those of us that she has adopted into her family as she has shared her motherly love and wisdom, and council and discipline with.”
Dorothy’s son Doug once described his mom as “one of God’s ambassadors for mankind,” and “because of her, our family doesn’t see color.”
My family, for one, has been truly blessed to have had the opportunity to get to know one of God’s ambassadors.
That’s the gift given to us on this day of celebration.
For the first time since her dad passed away last October, Kim and I stayed on the farm this past weekend.
I remember the first time I went up to the farm. I had driven up the Pennsylvania Turnpike to the city of Somerset to surprise Kim and run in a 10 K race that was sponsored by the local newspaper, the Daily American. Though still kind of early in our relationship I think we originally had plans to make this trip together that got messed up somehow. And after some regret, I got directions from a guy I worked with who used to frequent Seven Springs Ski Resort, and off I went.
The race start and finish were at the Somerset High School football field. I got a hotel room just off the Turnpike exit for Somerset, went over to the Daily American office to register, then I had dinner at the Pizza Hut. The next day I rolled on up to the race and surprised Kim as she was walking up to the field with other members of her family and Donny and Savannah.
Out of 270 runners, Kim’s brother Kerry finished 32nd, her sister Kate 136th, and Kim finished 151st. Donny and I ran together and he finished 199th and I crossed the finish line as the 200th runner. Of course, Donny beat me as he always did. Our times with 1:02:08 and 1:02:09 respectively. Donny was eleven at the time.
After the race, Kim brought me back to the farm to meet her parents. Kim’s family owned a fairly large dairy farm in the village of Kingwood which is about twenty miles southwest of the city of Somerset on the Laurel Highlands. At the time her parents lived in the farmhouse directly across from the barn where they kept the dairy cows and where the milking parlor was located. A couple of years later they would build the house we stayed in this past weekend on another part of the farm adjacent to the house where Royal, Kim’s father, was born in and on land his father had farmed.
I don’t know whether it was me surprising her at that race that sealed the deal or just being my charming good looking self but as a result, I would go on to take many more trips up to the farm after that because of course we got married and I now had lots of in-laws. I learned how to milk cows, fed pigs, and rode in a combine.
If you are like me and grew up near the ocean in New Jersey, you might not know that the black and white dairy cows are called Holsteins.
On one of those visits, I came around the corner of the barn to find out it was Holstein toenail trimming day. There, working behind the barn were Kim’s brothers Keith and Kerry, the veterinarian, and a cow. The vet had this hydraulic table on the back of his truck that would come out and stand upright next to the cow. Then the cow was secured to the table while standing there on her four legs. Once secured, the table thing would lift up and flip sideways. Now with the cow laying down on its side and its legs sticking out, the vet busted out a circular saw proceeded to zing off the unwanted part of the cow hooves. Once the trimming was done, Kim’s brother pulled out a hypodermic needle the size of a turkey baster and injected some antibiotics into the pads of the hooves to keep the cow from getting an infection. Once all that was done, the cow was flipped back right side up again and unattached and back in the barn she went.
It was an experience I will never forget, but it made me appreciate toenail clippers much more.
As you might expect with cows, and manure pits, and muddy fields and such, trips up to the farm and especially the barn were hard on my Northern Virginia shoes and boots. So early on I got smart and went out to some discount shoe store in Somerset (maybe Walmart) and bought the cheapest pair of shoes I could find and deemed them forever to be my “barn shoes.” They were kind of funny looking but I didn’t care, they were just barn shoes. They would live in one of the cabinets in the garage and be there whenever I needed to make the trip to the barn.
Over the years the cows got sold and the dairy farm got converted to crop farming. Without the cows, my barn shoes got a little less important, and spent more time in the cabinet, though I think I did wear them once last October to feed the pigs.
This weekend I decided to bring my barn shoes home. With Kim’s dad gone and her mom now living up in Davidsville, closer to Johnstown, in a nice assisted living, I probably won’t be spending too much time at the barn.
I will keep them though.
Just in case the manure ever gets a little too deep around here.
And as a nice reminder of past times together with Kim’s family up on the mountain.
I don’t who any of these folks are but this is at the beginning of the race at Somerset High School.Meet the Holsteins! Donny and I meeting with cows. Donny holding a barn cat.Me showing my future mother-in-law how to cook in the kitchen of the old farmhouse. That is Kim’s sister Kate to the leftThat was my vehicle at the time parked near the area of the barn with the milking parlor. The farmhouse is to the left of my vehicle.
