Interview Clip: From Grandmother
“We keep our grandmothers sacred. Even the ones we never knew. For we know they survived so many things, and we are them. Survivors again and again-the children of survivors and the mothers of ones, too.”
I like the soft and official way that she says “Grandmother.” It is not shortened to “Nana”, or “Grandmama” or “Grandma.” It is official and large and full-bodied and feminine. It is grandiose. It is the honoring that catches me and allows me to commit her way of saying it to memory. Its sound dips in the center and comes back up with wonder just at the -er. When she, my great-aunt Rachael Stevens speaks that word in interviews with me, she generally refers to Mary Frances Lawson Bailey Smoot, the mother of her own mother, Rachael Bailey and my 2nd great-grandmother. When we both cross the tree to her other grandmother, her paternal grandmother and my second-great grandmother, we have far less to go on. Her maternal grandmother, Mary Frances Lawson Smoot, was considered the mother of Waterloo Baptist Church and was an integral part of her life and many others in the Waterloo community, both related and non-related. But her paternal grandmother, Mary Clara Smoot (Craig was her maiden name) died in October 1933. But what she, Rachael Stevens, has from this “Grandmother” she holds sacred. You see on the day that Rachael Stevens was born, her grandmother Mary Clara Smoot canned a jar of blueberries that same day. It is this canned jar of blueberries that you see featured in the photo and that you see still see in my great-Aunt Rachael’s home. It is a reminder of the other “Grandmother” she never got to know, but always keeps with her.
