Her House Overflowed with Children

Sunday Evening,
December 1, 2019

She left us today, Joyce Margaret, or Aunt Joyce to so very many who  love her so very well.

You see, she wasn’t able have to any children of her own – but she found herself surrounded by nieces and nephews, great nieces, a bunch of great nephews, who filled the empty places within her just as she filled the empty places within us.

God heard her cries – and filled her house.

“’Shout for joy, O barren woman, who bears no children; break forth into song and cry aloud, you who have never travailed; because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband,’ says the LORD” – Isaiah 54:1.

She refused to lock her porch door during the day. Someone was always stopping by – and when you walked in, she accepted you just as you were. When I’d go home to visit, she was at the door, holding it open – whether if it was with all my boys, a few of them or just me – and just being there gave me rest (I am sure the excitement of the welcome equaled the excitement at leaving). We didn’t entertain each other – we just sat. Sometimes we talked a lot and sometimes we didn’t talk at all. . . and she’d make me coffee. When I was little, she made me hot chocolate. When I grew up, she made me coffee.

Grandmother, Aunt Joyce, Mom

I’ll miss our trips to Plehn’s Bakery. She loved the Angel Dips. I’d get cookies for the boys. We’d go out to lunch and enjoy a cup of coffee. At Christmas, she’d ask me to get the boys something for Christmas – and she’d give them nerf guns and darts – probably their top 3 favorite gifts.

Aunt Joyce lived up the street from Grandmother’s house, where my mom, my brother and I lived. When I got home from school, I’d walk up the street to visit my mom at work and then head up to Aunt Joyce’s.

“Now don’t talk too much or get into anything. She doesn’t have children, so don’t make her nervous,” Grandmother admonished before I’d head up the street.

I loved those quiet solitary walks to her house – especially in the autumn when the leaves covered the sidewalk, and they’d cover my feet if I shuffled through, or the leaves would fly up if I flipped them up with the toe of my shoes as I walked. Poor kids today wouldn’t be allowed to walk up the street like that until they were too old to really enjoy it.

When her dog Perry had to be put down, I was volunteered to go with her. I was about seven years old then. When we walked out of the vet office, she was crying. Since I didn’t know what to say, I said nothing, but just rode with her. I learned there’s comfort in quiet companionship, even when you don’t know what to say.

She got a new dog, Beau. In the afternoons, we’d take him for a walk. Sometimes we’d watch an afternoon t.v. show, but mostly we just kept company. One day, she helped me make my first cake – a prune cake, for a Girl Scout badge.

Every Sunday morning, she came to our house early to fix grandmother’s hair, sit a spell, and then mom, my brother, grandmother and I rode with her to church. Every Sunday! Unless you were sick.

Aunt Joyce had a gift for growing tomatoes. Uncle Jim, Grandmother’s farmer brother, would come by Sunday evenings, walk past her tomato patch and say, “If  you keep planting them in the same place, your tomatoes won’t grow.” Yet every year, she planted in the same place, and harvested the best tomatoes around.

She finally planted a Holly bush in the tomato patch one year, which grew and grEW and GREW until it became a nuisance and had to be cut down. Then her tomatoes grew, year after year, along the outside of her fence.  She despaired of the squirrels who waited patiently along with her for each tomato to ripen – and it became a game to see who could get to it first. Apparently, she and the squirrels were like-minded about a tomato’s readiness for harvesting, then it became a matter of who got there first.

Her husband, Uncle Pres, died Derby Eve my senior year of high school. Uncle Pres always was gracious enough to be my partner in badminton at family events – and never minded if I whiffed the serves or returns. Her loss drew the relationship between the people in the two houses even closer. My brother or I alternated staying with her until we married, and more often than not, grandmother, mom, my brother and I had dinner at her house.

Aunt Joyce and Grandmother on my wedding day

When Princess Diana married, Aunt Joyce and I got up early to watch the fairy tale wedding that turned out to be not such a fairy tale. As I was thumbing thru a magazine on the history of princess wedding dresses, I fell in love with Princess Grace’s dress. Paging through with me, she said, “If you marry a prince, I’ll buy you a wedding dress just like that!”

When Keith and I got engaged, she was so pleased, she said he was a prince and did buy my wedding dress. It wasn’t a Princess Grace dress, but it was perfect for me!

When my oldest son was about 4 years old, when he realized I wouldn’t divorce his dad to marry him, he proposed to Aunt Joyce. She said, “Yes.” They were engaged until he threw her over to marry his sweet wife.

I think because of her inability to have children, she understood the hurt when after my first son, we experienced secondary infertility and were unable to have more children. After every test or procedure, she’d call to see how I was doing – that was in the day when long distance calls were expensive and people, even family, didn’t call often by long distance.

It was a three year soul-stretching journey. She was on the phone with me when I took a home pregnancy test that turned positive. Just as she had grieved with me in my lowest low, she rejoiced in our answered prayer.

Most of our stories aren’t eventful stories – most of them are just spending time stories, doing little to nothing – maybe planting tomatoes, driving around Louisville nurseries trying to find a Lemon Meringue Baptista to give her sister, a pink dogwood blossom in the spring because I wanted to take a photo, to admire the tulips at The First Baptist Church, raking leaves on Thanksgiving, carrying up her Christmas Tree, putting wreaths on her windows, cooking together, sitting long, talking much and little. . . and coffee in the mornings.

She’d always say about people, “Oh, they’re crazy.” I’m sure she said it about me, too. We laugh that she thought everyone was “pixilated” – from the Gary Cooper in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. In the movie, everybody, according to the two spinsters who had raised Cooper’s character, were “pixilated” – meaning everybody was a little crazy except them, even Cooper’s character. I’d laugh and tell her, “We’re all pixilated, except you.” She’d laugh her laugh, saying, “Probably so.”

Aunt Joyce and I Derby Week with The Middletown Women’s Club.

Through the years, I vintaged the family history with her.

“How many hamburgers did you eat during the war,” I’d asked over lunch one time.

“Oh, hamburgers were a luxury,” she said. Soup Beans were the main staple, adding, “We were so happy when Muddy had baby chicks.”

“Because they were so cute and fluffy,” I asked, probably proving I was pixilated.

“Because then we’d have chicken to eat,” she answered. Aunt Joyce was born in 1930. Her Muddy and Granddaddy owned a farm that helped provide them food during The Great Depression and World War II. They’d go to the country to visit on Sundays, and Muddy would send them back home laden with food they grew for the week. In the Summers, they’d spend weeks on the farm.

Grandmother made clothes for all her daughters. She could go to the department stores downtown, see a dress, then come home and make it. During Aunt Joyce’s senior year, she was voted Best Dressed at Sacred Heart Academy.

After high school, she went to work in an office until she married. The sister just under her had been bold enough to ask if she could go to nursing school. Grandmother said, “No,” but Grandfather said, “Yes” — and a way was made. It made me think about the scripture, “You have not because you ask not” ~ James 2:4.

A few years ago, when Aunt Joyce and I talked about it, when asked why she didn’t go to college, she simply said, “I didn’t know I could.” She’d never thought or dared to ask. she was caught in the time shift of women’s roles, of what women could and couldn’t do. Maybe that’s why she helped me chase after my dreams when I was turning 50 and she addressed 50 envelopes for a transcript to go to publishers.

So much of Aunt Joyce had already left us before today – dementia does that, stealing piece by piece the ones you love.  Madeline L’Engle’s book The Summer of The Great Grandmother expressed so much of what I felt – and encouraged the vintaging of her story, the remembering, even when she began to falter in the remembering. (If you have a loved one going through this hard journey, it is a book I recommend to both give you comfort and to help you pull the grace out of it).

She was ready to go – she’d told us over and over for two years. Yet, in so many ways, I’m not.

On Thanksgiving, I cooked her green beans and mashed potatoes, her mother-in-law, Mrs. Schrader’s, baked apples. I used less crackers in her oyster stuffing recipe this year, or maybe they’re Grandmother’s or Mom’s recipe. Mrs. Schrader, Grandmother, and Aunt Joyce are gone, but their recipes still grace the table.

I’m going to miss someone being as excited as I am about eggplant parmesan! Who else will I ever make Cointreau Cake for? Cooking isn’t just cooking where I come from. The kitchen is where relationship building happens; cooking together is the electrostatic force that builds the bond for relationships to grow.

No, I’m not going to like the empty space left behind. I already miss the daily catching up. I’m going to miss the one who knows the other half of so many stories, who knows the places to find Spring flowers that I haven’t heard of, who had a place for me to go home to, who is just as excited as I am about pink dogwoods blooming and hydrangeas coming back – and joins me in my pixilated dream chasing. I’m going to miss the sitting long and talking little, or much, or whatever the moment needs. . . and someone who just lets you be who you are and or tell you what to do.

I think that is something I will work on – just being someone who lets you be who you are when you walk through my door. . .

I know I’m not the only one who will miss Aunt Joyce. . . her house overflowed with children of all ages.

“God’s grace provides for the barren ones a joyful home with children so that even childless couples find a family. He makes them happy parents surrounded by their pride and joy. That’s the God we praise, so give it all to him!” – Psalm 113:9