Margaret Inez Gill was born on September 4, 1916 to Charley Melton Gill and Mamie Price Erwin Gill. She was the second child and second daughter born to the young couple. Mary Elizabeth Gill, her older sister, was born nearly two years earlier in December, 1914. Mother was born in Franklin County, Texas near Mount Vernon. Her father was a mailman at the time, while most of his brothers and his father were farmers. I don't this for certain, but I strongly suspect Mother was born yelling and screaming, full of life from moment one. She was called Inez from the beginning and throughout her life. She never knew where her parents got the name and always found it curious. It is a Spanish name and given that her parents were Irish and English, I always found it curious too. Mother was an active, curious, intelligent person even as a child. She watched and understood people, never liked playing with dolls, and was a bit of a neat freak, even as a child. She began learning to cook at a very young age and by the age of eight took over much of the family cooking. She was always proud of the fact that she did this. I can only imagine Grandma's consternation and frustrations at Mother as a child. Grandma Gill was a quiet and calm. Mother was not quiet and as jittery as a cat who has had too much catnip. It was only in her last years that she became quiet and calm. When this happened, we all became quite concerned. We didn't know what to do with a quiet and calm Inez.
When Mother was four years old, the Gill family moved, by train, from Franklin County in East Texas to Lubbock County in West Texas. Mother always talked about the train trip to Lubbock with wonder. She didn't recall a great deal of details, but always said she felt important to be taking such a long train journey. It fascinated her too that they left a home with lots of trees and water and ended up in a place so flat, so dry, and with so few trees. For a while, she thought they would be returning home and was a bit disappointed when they didn't. She soon grew accustomed to life in West Texas and would remain there the rest of her life.
Over the years Mother told many stories of her childhood and it helped explain the woman she became. For instance, when I was growing up, any time a cat showed up in our yard or had the audacity to make it all the way to the door, Mother would take a broom and shoo it away. She was quite aggressive in this and I would become quite distressed. I wanted to feed and adopt every stray cat that came along. Mother wouldn't allow it. In my mind I thought she was being mean and would resent her. Then one day she told me that when she was growing up in a little house filled with people and cats, I began to understand. She said that when she was a little girl, their house was always full of cats. They kept them primarily to get rid of mice and rats. They weren't really pets. She said, "There was always a cat somewhere, making a mess, smelling the place up. I would wake up with a cat on me, often on my face, and I hated that. Especially when I heard that cats would steal the breath out of you while you were asleep. I always vowed I'd never have a house full of cats. I don't like animals in the house. They're dirty and messy and should be outside." Despite this attitude, if a mother cat had kittens anywhere around our house, she would protect them and have me feed the mama to make sure the "poor little kittens didn't starve." In her later years she actually did have cats as pets. One especially, Molly, stole her heart. Molly was a little mother cat who had kittens in Mother and Daddy's backyard. Mother found homes for the kittens, took Molly to the vet and had her spayed, and loved her dearly. (Craig and I adopted the runt of Molly's litter, Esmerelda. We had her for years.)
Mother grew up in a little square house with four rooms. Each room had an outside door and Mother always hated that. It made her feel insecure. She said the house was not built well and you could see outside through some of the walls. When the wind blew, which was often, dirt would cover everything. This drove Mother crazy and she would go into a frenzy of dusting and sweeping and cleaning. In the winter, it was a bitterly cold house, given that they only had a coal stove to warm the place. Bed space was limited, so all the girls slept together in one bed, which she said helped them stay warm. As they grew up, it became quite crowded and Mother said she often felt she was suffocating. Throw in waking up with a cat on her face and I can understand her feeling that way!
Mother liked school. She was smart, did well in her classes, and enjoyed getting to see her friends. She graduated from the eighth grade and did not go to high school. At that time, if you wanted to go to high school, you had to go to Lubbock High School and she just wasn't interested in making that trip. She was more interested in boys than school at that point. Her sister, Mary, did go to Lubbock High School and graduated. I think most of Mother's siblings did go to Lubbock High and get their diplomas. Despite not having a high school diploma, Mother was smart and had learned her lessons well. She was especially good at math. I was always amazed at her ability to do lengthy, complicated calculations in her head. After calculators came out, I would try to catch her in a mistake and never did.
Charley and Mamie sent their kids to church, but didn't attend regularly themselves. (Grandma did become a regular churchgoer later after moving to Lubbock.) Mary would take all the kids to church, first by horse and wagon and later by car when they got one. Over the course of Mother's life, she was baptized three times and was a Methodist, Baptist, and finally a member of the Church of Christ. She had all of her Christian bases covered! She became a member of the Church of Christ after marrying Daddy. She said that she and Daddy would sit at the kitchen table and he took her through the bible and taught her the gospel. She loved those talks and treasured them always. She wasn't baptized until Judy was a baby, but was a lifelong believer and taught all of her kids the gospel. She taught me at the kitchen table. If I had any questions about God or the bible, we'd sit down at the table and she'd walk me through the scriptures. She wanted to make sure I didn't pick up any bad teaching and I learned more at that kitchen table than many years in Sunday School.
Mother was a good woman. We often talk and laugh about her high spirit (ok, temper), her blunt way of telling you exactly what she thought, and her complete inability to let things go a bit in the housekeeping department, but underneath it all she was kind and loving. She could, and would, spank you at breathtaking speed, but she also would take you in her lap in the rocking chair if you were sick and rock you for hours. She lovingly sewed her daughters clothes, cooked three meals a day for her family, and had great wisdom when it came to health and preventing illness. I was a sickly child growing up. I had asthma, was anemic, and underweight. Mother took great care of me through it all. (However, when I got up in the middle of the night as a toddler with a bad asthma attack, my sister Judy was the one who got up with me, gave me medicine, and cleaned up my messes.) Mother always listened to me and gave me advice, whether I wanted to hear it or not. If I was heartbroken, she let me cry and gave me hugs. If I was excited and happy, she was too. If I made what she thought were foolish choices, she let me know, repeatedly and loudly. (Looking back from here, I can see she was right more often than not, dang it!) Mother loved Daddy more than any woman I've ever seen love a man. She loved her kids and grandkids. She never liked to see anyone abused or mistreated. She had a really good heart. What more could anyone ever want in a mother?
Inez, L.D. & Elaine Wood, 1972
Beautiful! I love getting to know family this way, Dee :)
ReplyDeleteThanks for doing these, Dee. They are fun to read!
ReplyDelete