MY MOTHER'S HANDS

I have been thinking lately about how we have talked so much about all the amazing things that Dad did as a pioneer missionary, as an innovative, creative personality, as a college president, pastor, father & friend. It struck me that he couldn’t have done all of that without the support, courage and pioneer spirit of his wife. She had to be equal to the task and willing to go on that journey with him. She was not without stamina, creativity, perseverance and a strong faith.

Years ago, when I was writing a lot more, before I got so caught up in bringing up children and life, I had planned to write an article about this amazing woman that I call Mom. One day I was looking at her arthritic hands and got to thinking about all of the wonderful things that she had done with those hands. I am now going to do what I wanted to do so long ago.

In college, she played softball and was in the band. Her fingers helped to bring music forth from her alto horn. It was that horn that gave my Dad one of his first opportunities to hang out with her…he carried her “heavy” horn for her back to the room where the instruments were stored after band practice.

Later, those hands mentored little children in the kindergarten classroom, prior to her joining my Dad in Liberia after the war was over.

Mom and Dad married after college and Dad left two weeks later for Africa without her. He traveled by freighter across the ocean in a zigzag pattern to avoid enemy subs. About two years later, Mom joined Dad in Liberia, flying over there alone to meet him. I asked her once, as only I can, to please try to tell me what it was like meeting your husband again after being apart for so long and having only been married for two weeks. No matter how hard I prodded to get her to give me details of stress, adjustment, etc., all she would say is, “you just do what you have to do”.

While in Liberia she became pregnant with their first child, my sister, Rosie. Here she is, young and alone – away from her mother, no cell phones, no email – and with a doctor who was really a veterinarian and had to look everything up in books. The only other woman available to her was the wife of the headmaster of the school where Dad was employed. Mom has often commented about the fact that God just took care of them because there were no doctors or hospitals available like there were when my own children were born.

They came home from Liberia and then returned to Northern Rhodesia. Here, my older brother was born…breech. My daughter has had two breech babies who were delivered by c-section. My daughter-in-law also had to have her breech baby delivered by c-section. My mother delivered Paul while he was in the breech position. Because they lived so far away from the hospital, she couldn’t wait until she went into labor but had to be taken there to wait to go into labor. When she arrived before Paul was born, the doctor fussed at her and asked why she hadn’t come in before for her appointments. She had…he was a different doctor and hadn’t seen her at any of the other visits to the hospital in Lusaka. He was scared about her condition and therefore the gruffness to her regarding the situation. She survived…obviously and thankfully!

Mom was very active in many of the aspects of the mission work. She helped in the school, teaching the women life skills, she helped in the hospital and learned medical skills that would give many of us pause!
She learned to give injections, bandage wounds and once assisted in sawing a woman’s arm off to save her life following a crocodile bite.

The following is an excerpt of a letter from a fellow missionary at the time.

John and Eva Blann pioneered the Gwembe Valley work in
what was then Northern Rhodesia. They were there during the late 1940’s and the early 1950's for their first term. They were the first
missionaries to take a motor vehicle down to the Zambezi River in the
Gwembe Valley and then they built a Mission Station on the banks of the River and ministered to the Gwembe Valley people through schools and a hospital. They were the first white people to spend the rainey season in the Gwembe Valley and I could go on and on...

It was while they were serving in the Valley that Dad built the grass hut they lived in while they were preparing to build a block house with thatch roof. This was the place where Mom was bitten on her finger by a puff adder snake. They were 200 miles from Lusaka (and the nearest hospital). The nurse that was serving with them in the Valley gave Mom all the anti-venom serum she had and they all piled into the Landrover (jeep)…Mom, Dad, Rosie, Paul and the nurse…and headed for Lusaka over dirt roads. Upon arriving at the hospital, the doctor declared that if she wasn’t already dead, she was probably going to make it. Many times on the trip there, Mom was sure that she wasn’t going to live. Miraculously, she lived, but her once beautiful hands were no longer intact. She lost the finger that the snake bit due to gangrene but that didn’t keep her hands idle. She learned to compensate and continued to type, play the piano and organ and all of the other normal tasks that she was called upon to execute.

Later, a snake got into the chicken house and swallowed a chicken and couldn’t get out because of the chicken inside of him. After the African boys killed the snake, Mom held it up in her bare hands for a picture. Dad wouldn’t go near it but we have a picture to prove her gumption.

They came back to the states in 1952 for a furlough. I was born during this time. At 33 years of age, she bravely returned to Africa with three children, one of them an infant of two months. She may have been brave but her mother wasn’t so thrilled that my parents were venturing out on an ocean liner with their infant granddaughter back to the land of scorpions and malaria.

Speaking of malaria, these hands of which I speak helped pour quinine down our throats to try to protect us from that disease. I remember my dad holding me in his arms and holding my nose as Mom waited for the open mouth, gasping for breath, to pour the dreaded medicine in. And when we did get sick, as all of us did, those same hands comforted and soothed us through our fevers. Her hands tucked our mosquito nets in at night to protect us from the mosquitoes that carried that disease.

Those precious hands drew outlines of our feet and sent them back to my grandmother in the states so that she could get us new shoes and send them back to Africa for us. (I just found one of those outlines in a file drawer today.) Often, by the time the shoes reached us, we may have already outgrown them.

Mom tells a story of a time when I was a baby and on the floor of the living room in our house in a make shift playpen. (Dining room chairs turned on their sides). She glanced across the room and to her horror she saw a snake not far from where I was playing. She grabbed me up and removed me to safety but I have often wondered why she didn’t just then and there, demand to remove her precious children to a safer environment!!! That is what “normal” parents would do, right? Would I have had that stamina to take those things in stride? Scorpions, snakes, malaria, etc.?

Another story I love to recall is how she protected my dad’s life. It may not have been in peril but I supposed it could have been. Dad was working with the African men to dig a well. There was some problem and someone needed to go down in the well to check things out. No one else would, so Dad did. The African men lowered Dad in a bucket. At some point they lost control of the rope and dropped Dad down into the well. They all panicked and ran because they thought they had killed the missionary. Mom became aware of what was going on and took control of the situation. She demanded they return and she instructed them on what to do to get him out. He was hurt, not seriously, but her quick thinking and commanding spirit was definitely helpful to Dad that day!

Mom worked on the business side of the mission station doing much of the necessary bookwork. She worked with the clothing that was sent out from the states to help distribute it among the natives. This was a regular occurrence and part of the mission responsibility.

When we came back to the states in 1960, Mom returned to her elementary school teaching. Later, in 1966, when Dad became president of Frankfort Pilgrim College, Mom went there to work as well. First helping out in the office and then on to being the campus librarian.

Her hands helped me learn to drive but mostly her feet got a workout on the imaginary brakes on the passenger side of the car.

Mom and I had a rough time through most of my high school years. Poor Mom…she was “blessed” with a daughter who didn’t quite fit her expectations of what a refined young lady should be. I didn’t walk right, talk right, dress right and often think right. I was the one who embarrassed her with “to the point” questions, loud, silly voices and grades that were not acceptable. But I KNOW that she loves me! I moved away from home soon after I graduated from high school. Not too long after I had moved I got a call from Mom to tell me that she was going to take a bus trip, by herself, from Indiana to Milwaukee, to come and spend time with me because she missed me. I was astounded and excited. That was the beginning of our adult friendship. Over the years I learned that it was okay to be me and she seemed to like that part of me that she could never, herself be.

Later, she worked hand in hand with Dad in his pastorates. She directed the choirs at their churches with her wonderful hands. At one of their churches, she was awarded a directors baton and she treasured it for years.

Her hands have never been idle. She lovingly crocheted each of her grandchildren an afghan and wasn’t satisfied until she had completed a blanket for each of her 17 grandchildren.

She unselfishly cared for her mother in the last years of her life and when she was gone, she moved on to volunteer in the local facility to clothe and feed the needy.

Mom and Dad moved from Denton, MD to Orange Park, FL in 2001, just 2 weeks before the 9/11 tragedy. It has been my honor and privilege to be able to use my hands to give back in the care of my parents these past 8 ½ years. Mom’s hands comforted Dad in his last days. I have photos of some tender moments as she rubbed his face and loved on him as he was preparing to journey on to be with Jesus.

Mom’s hands are still active. She uses them to play bingo in the facility where she is now living. Another new fascination for her is Wii bowling! She just doesn’t understand why more people at the facility are not interested in trying it. Her memory is such that she can’t remember from one time to the next how to hold and release the button (she has to be constantly reminded) but that doesn’t stop her. Any time there is Wii bowling going on, she’s there!!

These hands of my mother’s have diapered, spanked, caressed , comforted, worshipped, ministered (both spiritually and physically). The important thing to remember is that she never could have accomplished this with such grace and selflessness without the strength and daily presence of her Lord and Savior. Even yet, in her diminished state of mind, her love for others is evident in her interaction with those around her, both residents and staff. She continues to be a light in the darkness as the love of Jesus shines through her. Thank you, Lord, for the gift of my mother and her very special hands!