Southern Roots and Grafted Branches
“Someone in my family is coming to visit me,” my mother says, tears spilling out of her eyes as she hangs up the phone. Though this doesn’t sound like something that would normally provoke tears, knowing my mother’s story, her roots—and thus mine—illuminates the present moment.
Unlike my dad, who grew up in North Avondale, Colorado, a town which at that time consisted of eighteen homes and ten trailers, my mom cannot claim any specific location as her childhood home. My dad learned to drive at age nine so that he could pick up the garbage in the trailer court owned by his grandparents; at the same age, my mom was in the mountains of Guatemala climbing the center belfry of the cathedral in Chichicastenango and looking down on the shamans burning incense on the stairs. My dad hid behind crates and plotted his onion war strategies in the Cirullo brothers’ storage shed; my mom got the autographs of the Iranian Shah and his wife at a recently opened bowling alley in Tehran. My dad played football for the Pueblo County Hornets; my mom grabbed a K-ration as she boarded a C-130 during an evacuation from Tripoli at the beginning of the Six Days’ War. As the daughter of a petroleum engineer, my mom never lived in the same house longer than three years. Now, because of political instability, I have never been to any of the short-term homes where she grew up in Venezuela, Iran, and Libya.
Now that I am a mother, I realize my mom has given me much of what she didn’t have herself. Her own mother, Mary Katherine (nicknamed Tappy), passed away several months before I, her fifth child, was born. She can’t call her mom several times a day to ask questions or just to talk like I can. Her father, who now resides in Texas, doesn’t like to travel, and also doesn’t like visitors. Her only sibling, a younger sister, has struggled with mental illness most of her life and prefers not to see family.
So whose phone call brings tears to my mom’s eyes? Aunt Weezie and Uncle Roy from Gulfport, Mississippi (say these names with the thickest Southern drawl you can think of and you’ll get it right). They are vacationing in Jackson Hole and are thinking they might drive down to Salt Lake City to visit and “see the whole Mormon thing,” though Roy teasingly asks my mom, the only convert in her family, “Now, you’re not gonna make me sit through some three hour meetin’, are ya?”
Weezie, whose given name is Bessie Louise, is Tappy’s younger sister. Weezie and Roy’s house was my mom’s home for the weekend when she attended the University of Southern Mississippi, since her own parents still lived halfway around the world at the time. To have them visit her now, in an established home in Utah is, in my mother’s words, the “closest thing to having my own mom and dad come see me.” This, I think, is what brings tears.
My mom’s standard Sunday dinner invitation suddenly changes from “Come if you can, we’ll eat around 5:30,” to “Come. Even if your kids are sick, come.” We all came—twenty-five of us. Only my older brother Jeff, his wife, and their five children who live in Germany were missing.
In a note written to my grandfather upon Tappy’s death, a close friend said that my grandmother’s presence seemed to dissipate the clouds and bring out the sunshine. Since I only know my grandmother through stories and photographs, I come that evening hoping to see some of her through Weezie. When I arrive with my husband and sons, Weezie and Roy are already there. My dad is checking the skirt steaks on the grill and my mom is bringing a salad out to an overflowing buffet table she has set out on the patio. Weezie and Roy are standing near the sliding glass door talking with one of my sisters.
I have met Weezie and Roy before. I have cloudy memories of swimming in their pool when I was eight, but, growing up, my family never lived near extended family and visits with relatives were few and far between. As a child I was always jealous of those friends who couldn’t play because they were going to their cousins’ house. I have eight cousins, two of which I remember seeing more than three times. (Heavenly Father was mindful of my jealousy, though. I now get to drink from the cousin fire hose since my husband has sixty-one cousins on one side alone.)
While I can place Weezie and Roy in the root system of my mother’s family tree, I really only know about them through my mother’s stories. The metaphor of the family tree reminds me how beautifully meaningful aspects of nature are when we recognize the reflections of human experience in them. In many plants, roots and branches reflect one another. The hidden root is often comparable in size and distribution to the plant it supports and feeds. Branches reach for life-giving sunlight just as roots extend into the earth for water and nutrients. Like branches that grow thicker with age, roots also expand to buttress the growing plant. My evening with Weezie and Roy was about much more than knowing where and how far their root reaches; it was about increasing its breadth, so that my branch could become stronger.
Perhaps it’s just classic Southern hospitality, or perhaps it’s that same sunshine that my grandmother possessed, but I feel immediately comfortable with Weezie. After hugging me she asks my sons’ names and says to my oldest, “Honey, you look just like your Uncle Matt when he was young.”
As everyone finishes dinner, Weezie retrieves a bag from her hotel gift shop and presents each of her great-grandnieces and nephews with a small stuffed dog that barks when squeezed. The children are encouraged to escape to the playroom so the adults can sit and talk on the patio. When the sounds of barking fade, my mom hurries into the kitchen and brings out a manila folder and a large plate of her signature chocolate chip cookies—the same cookies she has proven, upon my challenge, she can make blindfolded with one arm tied behind her back. We all become quiet as we fill our mouths with cookie deliciousness, and my mom opens the manila folder to reveal several old family photos.
When the photo of a family reunion reaches one of my brothers-in-law, he looks at it and, pointing to two elderly people, asks Weezie, “Now this is Kiki and Dad Jake, right?” Kiki and Dad Jake are Weezie’s parents. A simple question, but the deeper meaning behind it warms me like Tappy’s sunshine. It means my mom has shared her roots with her children. Her children have shared their roots with their spouses. Her Southern roots have become large enough to support even grafted branches in the family tree and will continue to strengthen generations to come. I realize that I haven’t been looking for my grandmother in Weezie, but rather I have been hoping to see myself in Weezie so that I can know what connects me to the women in my family tree. I think it’s sunshine—the sunshine that allows our roots and branches to grow stronger together.
Katie Stirling joined Segullah as a copy editor in 2007, shortly after completing a master’s degree in comparative literature from BYU. She currently has three major roles: wife to her supportive husband, mother to her two energetic sons, and entrepreneur in a new business adventure, BootScootBikes.com.
