Happy Father's Day

Because of my joining the Dayley family at just barely 16, this man,Ardell Dayley, played a huge fathering role in my life, teaching by example, commitment to family, hard work, perseverance, love, humility, and honesty. This is one of my favorite photos of my father-in-law, taken in the four- acre family owned Christmas tree farm that was behind our house in Martinez, California, because this is so typical of how I remember him. The tree farm was a great place for the kids to play, for parents to hide from their kids (which we did on occasion so we could talk with some privacy), and the opportunity for us to spend precious time with Mother and Dad every fall and winter for eight years when they came from Idaho and parked their travel trailer to run the farm. Even though Larry and Dan did a lot of work on the farm year-around, it would not have survived the way it did without Dad's hard and consistent work during the farm's busiest season.

Most of my earlier Idaho memories of Dad find him working in the long vegetable garden, monitoring canal water wearing tall rubber boots and carrying a shovel, mowing the big lawn, or walking the rest of the property checking for trouble in the way of gopher holes a horse might step into, fences that needed repair, or an alfalfa field ready for harvest. Later, after retirement (What's that?), Dad maintained that same kind of work ethic on the tree farm in California, constantly trimming trees, checking for disease, cutting out trees that might infect other ones, checking the fence for holes where a few dishonest broke through at night to steal their trees, and repairing the gravel parking lot when ruts developed. He was a man who loathed idleness, not in a preachy way, but as a matter of personality. Dad sat down for only six things I can think of: eating a good meal, attending a church meeting, watching a football game, visiting with a family member, reading (he loved National Geographic, Readers' Digest, The Book of Mormon, and the local newspaper), or resting in the big recliner after a hard day's work. Simply put, Dad was a man who got the job done. I've witnessed that principle at work in Dad's posterity--something they learned from example and can be proud to claim as a legacy of his. Happy Father's Day Dad! We miss you!

Resting and visiting with family. It must have been a Sunday, or we were a group too large for the little tv room, because this photo was taken in Mother and Dad's beautiful and spacious but not often used living room. Mother loved the big picture window that Dad put in when he built the house, and just recently I learned that Mother always insisted on living in a house that faced the mountains. She wanted that and Dad always saw to it, even in the smaller homes he built for them when they were younger.


A picture of my dad at about age 40. I don't have a lot of memories of my own father, something that went missing a long time ago. But I do know that my father was a good and gentle man who loved God and his five children and actively practiced his Christian faith. I can't remember a spanking or even a scolding from him ever. He was brilliant also, his IQ testing reported to have been extremely high. He was in the CIC during his time in the army and passed the CPA exam later in life. My father came from a long line of musicians, men and women who worked more with their minds and less with their hands. Dad was the youngest of four children and his first nieces tell stories of his being their favorite uncle. Dad played the piano, and my mother said, "Your daddy could play a mean saxaphone!" In fact, my parents met during a musical event in which he played the sax and she played the piano. Mom said she wasn't impressed at first because he was a bit cocky, but that disappeared immediately when he discovered that Mom wasn't impressed by that. Dad's siblings and cousin who still live in Memphis speak of my father as a man with great love for family and one who loved to laugh. I look forward to hearing the sound of that some day.

My earliest memory isn't really mine, but my mother has told me the story so often that I can almost remember. She says that when I was born (the third of five children) Dad liked to hold me by cradling my head in the palm of his hand, and my feet resting against the crook of his arm. He thought I was sweet and beautiful and practiced holding me that way until I grew too big. I imagine he must have smiled into my face as well, because I've always known that my father loved me.

One of my favorite memories is our regular trips to Howard Johnson's restaurant every weekend after my parents divorced. We always ate pancakes or waffles, and bacon, and on the way home, Dad made sure to drive us past Graceland for a possible glimpse of Elvis Presley. Dad always slowed the Chevrolet way down and we craned our necks as far and long as we could.

It was a sad day for all of us when we moved away from Memphis in 1969. My father died of cancer in 1972 when he was almost 44 and I was almost 14. Our birthdays are two days apart.

Road Trip! Again!!

Leaving for Memphis, folks. Driving again. Love to see unexplored country, take backroads I may never take again. Just my music, me and wide open spaces. The cool part is having an open ended return. I'll stay until it's time to leave. Well, not exactly. I have an appointment on May 9 that I have to be back for, but I am relishing the idea of being spontaneous and coming home when the time is right. Hope to do some more genealogy research while I'm there. I look forward to being with my family though, my aunt and uncles certainly, and some cousins too, if I'm lucky. I'll go see my dad's grave and visit some of the old places, but other than that, we'll see what happens. Because I'll be driving, I'll take my laptop, so look for a post or two while I'm away. See you from the road!

Easter at Pop's House 1966

Martha, Rachel and John, hamming it up (pun intended!).

These pictures go with an entry I posted on May 7, 2007.

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I love black, gospel music,

just in case you didn't know. Last night I went to Oakland with Clayton and Michele and we listened to and watched Gladys Knight with her gospel choir at the interstake center. There was clapping and hallelujiahs, amens from the audience, and I felt like a child wrapped in a soft old quilt. There's something so Memphis about that kind of music for me. I remember Sunday School and Bible School in the summers..."Jesus Loves Me, This I Know, for the Bible Tells Me So..." And when Gladys sang those same words with such power and sincerity, I couldn't stop the tears from flowing.

As children, we didn't grow up going to black churches, but the music FEELS so warm and familiar. Is it genetic memory? I have memories of gospel music flowing through open car windows as we passed church after church going grocery shopping at the Piggly Wiggly, the shoe repair, then stopping at the Wonder Bread factory for a free sample loaf of hot bread. And it didn't seem to matter what day of the week it was. Gospel music seemed to permeate the streets. I have memories of walking from the car to our church on Sundays and hearing music from another big church across the street so full of joy and enthusiasm for life, as though the music was part of the fabric of Memphis. Indeed, given the slave heritage, it must be. I have visions of domestic help singing while they worked, loud and raucous, or sweet and tender. Everywhere, that music wove itself into the fabric of my childhood. No wonder I loved it so much last night.

Black congregation churches in downtown Memphis are are large, stone, and full of beautiful stained glass. The churches out in the country are more simple, white clapboard usually, with green lawns and frequently an attached cemetery. No matter the building, the sounds are the same. Last night, what a gift. I made a trip home and oh, my Southern roots. How grateful I am for them, for their strength and for how deep and wide they extend, surpassing boundaries of color and race and wrapping us all together in a dialect of song.

A Woman's Influence

The following is from an email I received from an aunt who lives in Tennessee. She gave me permission to post this. My reply follows:

Dear Martha,

I have found your address and even pulled up your blog spot and read with both tears and pride about what you are experiencing. Using a computer is difficult for me and I often delete when I do not mean to. Also, I am totally new to blogs. I sorta of one finger type and have to go back and correct all of the time, so I am slow. But, I am overwhelmed by all that computers offer.

Back to you, what an inspiration you are and what courage you are showing. You look adorable in the wig, too. I always keep you and little Andrew in my prayers. You could not know this, but I have always prayed for Anne and all of you children for years. I am sorry that I have not gotten to know all of you and that you really do not know much about me. But, you may be sure that I have been impressed with all of you and what wonderful people you are. Your father would be so proud of you for he loved you all very much. I do hope that this reaches you as I often get messages returned. This building has poor cable connections and, recently, my carrier was changed. Now that I know how to get your blog, I'll check it frequently and continue my prayers for God's all encompassing love to surround you and your family and restore you to health of mind, body and spirit.

Love, Aunt Claire

Dear Aunt Claire and other readers,

We left Memphis and all family on both sides when I was ten years old and moved to Kansas City. There would be thirteen more moves during the next four years. At sixteen I married and put all my energy into creating and maintaining my own family. My other siblings were scattered, living in other states, but all on the west coast. Eventually I ended up doing what many people were doing in the 80's, and going for psychotherapy. During one visit I realized with clarity that I needed to go home again. It had been almost 30 years. My sister Rachel went with me and we spent a lot of time prior to the trip talking about our excitement and our fears. Aunt Claire you couldn't have known that I was the most nervous about your approval of me. Would I still have manners? Would I act like a lady? Would I be the same Martha that you remembered?

Well, now it's my turn to tell you that even though I loved all my aunts and uncles, you are the one woman I admired and respected the most and I still do. Especially now, when I feel the cruelty of facing cancer alone, I remember that you were widowed and raised two children alone during a time when women had to fight for their right to independence. You were the one who determined your own boundaries and lived by them. Even though you must have shed many tears alone, you are one of the strongest women I know and your example has given me strength and courage.

Since that first visit in 1987, my siblings and I have made other trips home, separately and together, and we've been able to reconnect with family including Uncle Don (now the family patriarch) and numerous cousins. Sometimes I wonder if my life journey will send me back to my roots in a more permanent way. My thoughts these days are never far from my childhood--barbeques in Aunt Claire's backyard with my dad at the grill, chasing fireflies, the giant hydrangea bush next to Granny's back porch, Pop in his rocker with his pipe and the smell of pipe smoke that I love to this day.

Aunt Claire, thank you for your constant love and prayers for us all these years. It's an honor to call you mine and I look forward our next family reunion in Florida. Love, Martha

Black Magic, Black Dress; My Childhood in Clothes 2

Ach, Mutter,This old, black dress, I have been embroidering French flowers on it. [1]

When my mother was a little girl, my grandmother worked as a tailor at the Sears and Roebuck factory down by the Mississippi River, a job she held during the Great Depression and for many years after. She became an expert seamstress.

Mamaw’s hands, gnarled with purple and blue veins and hard pointed fingernails that she filed regularly, were not rough, but they weren’t soft either. Sometimes she painted her nails a soft pink color, but most of the time her hands were busy—hanging clothes on the line—a continuous supply of socks, shorts, and smocks worn by me and my four brothers and sisters, chopping onions, peeling hard-boiled eggs, making the beds with box corners, rubbing our croupy chests with Vicks Vapor-rub, and always—sewing. Her brown wicker sewing basket was always nearby.

She seemed to be constantly patching pants, replacing buttons, darning socks, or embroidering a new face on an old stuffed animal. Her stitches and her imagination could transform something plain into an item of beauty. She made Barbie doll clothes out of fabric scraps and matching night gowns for my rag doll and me. But the most amazing thing she did was to make her stitches disappear while she sewed.

I sat by her on the couch many times as she wet the tip of a long thread with her tongue, then deftly passed the end through the eye of a needle, pulling the two thread ends even with each other, then wrapping them swiftly around her finger and into a secure knot. Into the fabric the needle went, and out again, up and down, every stitch disappearing as she worked. "Over, Mamaw! Let me see the back!" But the backs were always void of stitches too, and Mamaw always laughed at my perplexion. Many times she tried to show me how to sew, but my stitches glared from the fabric like the cracks on the school playground. I felt special whenever I wore something she had made. Store bought clothing just didn’t have the same feel and I began to wonder if Mamaw was magic. But like all Southern women of her time, Mamaw followed the social rules of etiquette, even when sewing, the same rules that governed how a lady looked, acted and even felt:

1) Never wear white in the winter
2) Black is for funerals or adult formal wear, not for children
3) Always wear gloves to church, or carry a pair if you haven't had time to wash them
4) Never carry a purse that doesn’t match your shoes
5) Always carry a hanky—one with your initials embroidered on it if you’re lucky
6) Always wear clean underwear in case you get in a car accident and have to go to the hospital
7) Before you leave the house, make sure your slip isn’t ‘showing.’


One Easter, Mamaw bought matching dresses of yellow and white dotted swiss for me and my younger sister. I don’t know if she was too busy to sew, or the dresses were on sale, but I knew it was supposed to be a privilege to wear store bought. Our yellow dresses screamed "Springtime!” They were delicate and lacey but the feeling wasn’t there.

When we returned home after Sunday services, the rain had stopped but water was still flowing down the gutter. The air smelled sweet and felt balmy and clean. We were leaving soon for Easter dinner at Mamaw's house, and Mama warned my sister and me not to get dirty, but we just wanted to float boats down the street—curled leaves and some empty walnut shell halves, pretending that fairies were going for a ride down a wild river. Fifteen minutes later, my mother’s face crumpled into disappointment when she saw the mud splatters on our new dresses. She hurried to get a rag and soap, but the stains didn’t come out completely.

When Easter came the next year, I was surprised when my grandmother pulled a piece of black velvet from her sewing closet and began measuring me. By the end of the day, I was wearing a beautiful new jumper over a white blouse, but something wasn't right. I turned slowly for my grandmother while she looked the dress over with a crease in her forehead. She tugged on the hem, pulled the dress at the back to test wiggle room, smoothed the jewel neckline. “It fits, Mamaw, it feels perfect!” But she continued to frown. “Aha!” she said a moment later, and reached for her mysterious sewing basket. I watched my grandmother’s hands while she rummaged through various containers: a miniature Whitman’s chocolate box that still smelled like chocolate even though it was full of snaps; an empty mayonnaise jar filled with buttons of every shape and color; a cigar box fraying at the edges, the mysterious contents of which were always changing. Mamaw's sewing basket not only held needles and thread, but zippers, rolls of ribbon and lace, rosettes, hooks and eyes, iron-on patches, thimbles and various small tools—contents that kept me entertained when I was little, and continued to fascinate me later.

Suddenly as from thin air, she held up two pink rose appliqués, one in each hand. “Ohhh!” I had never seen anything so beautiful. I fingered their soft raised texture. Within minutes, Mamaw had sewn one to each shoulder of the dress, the stitches disappearing with each prick of the needle. I viewed myself in the mirror. The pink roses glowed like the first tulips of spring. I smiled at my grandmother's soft expression and she smiled back. Now I had proof positive. I was going to wear black velvet. In the Spring time. To church. On Easter Sunday. My grandmother was indeed, magic.
[1] Wallace Stevens (1879–1955), U.S. poet. “Explanation.”

Three or Two in Aqua Blue; My Childhood in Clothes, 1.

It was a store-bought dress. I don’t know how I knew that at such a young age.

The little dark-eyed girl's favorite Sunday dress was a pale aqua dotted swiss with a smocked bodice and short ruffled sleeves, like fairy wings with white lace on the edges. She felt like a butterfly when she wore it, and every week in the old Presbyterian Church in downtown Memphis, someone always stopped her mother or father to comment on how beautiful she looked. Her mother would smile down at her, sometimes placing her white gloved hand on the top of her head gently, or reaching out to touch her if her father was holding her in his arms. The little girl thought she had the most beautiful mother anywhere.

The chapel was large with three sections and it sloped down toward the front. The little girl, her parents, and her older brother and sister always sat in the same place, the right side section, fifth row from the front. The little girl liked this spot because whether she was sitting or standing, she could see all the beautiful stained glass windows--the tall elegant ones in the front above the altar, and the more simple but still pretty ones on each side of the big room. She never got tired of looking at the blues and reds and yellows, the intricate designs and the way light through the glass made patterns on the opposite walls. She especially liked the stained glass window of Jesus with a kind look on his face, holding a little lamb, and when the sun was in the right place in the sky, it shined through the stained glass, lighting up Jesus in a way that made people stop and stare.

The little girl thought that the tall, dark benches they sat on every week always smelled like lemons and the same smell that came from the crack between the cushions of her grandmother's couch. She had to stand up to see over the backs of the benches, and her mother let her do this because she was a quiet child, obedient and sweet. The big round woman sitting on the row behind the little girl's family always raised her eyebrows and held out her large wiggling fingers to invite the little girl to sit on her ample lap. The little girl was rather shy and she'd smile and look away, but she was fascinated with the strings of shiny round beads hanging around the woman’s neck and down the front of her clothes, so she'd look at her again when she thought the woman wasn't looking at her.

There were many colorful hats in the congregation too, soft pink or green ones with little nets that hung down over the women's foreheads, or hats with beautiful flowers on the front or back. The little girl thought the hats were very pretty and she’d spend time looking, comparing one hat to the next. She thought some hats looked funny, especially the ones with feathers sticking up, but she always loved the tight simple little hats her mother wore that matched her dresses perfectly.

About the time that the little girl began to grow bored, the little girl's mother would say, "Look! There's your daddy!" while one by one, the choir members came through a special door in the corner behind the pulpit. It was a small round door like the one in a fairy tale. It opened in the wall, and many of the men had to duck to walk through it. The little girl's father was rather tall and she thought he looked so handsome standing in the back row of the choir in his long blue robe. One time she waved and said, "Hi Daddy!" real loud. Her father laughed, but her mother whispered in her ear that she had to be quiet in church. The little girl noticed that her father would always smile at her, but once the music began, he put on his serious face and watched the choir director. He sang with his mouth open wide like an egg and little lines in his forehead. Then the choir members would go back through the little door and after a few minutes, the little girl's father would appear next to her in his dark suit. Then the minister would stand up, walk to the pulpit and hold on to it with both hands. When he began speaking, the little girl’s mother and father would sit up straight and encourage her to listen. But the little girl didn't understand all of the minister’s big words and she would soon lose interest.

Sometime later, another man would walk down the aisle with a large silver plate in his hands. The little girl knew that people put money in the plate and sometimes the little girl would watch her father reach in his pocket and give a few coins to her older brother or sister, who put them in the plate just like a grown-up. When her father passed the plate across her to her mother, the little girl would look quickly to see the shiny nickels and dimes. She always wanted to play with the tray and its contents, but this was not allowed. So she would stand up again and watch the plate going from hand to hand, down the rows, around the room, and listen to the little plinking sounds as the coins were dropped.

After awhile, the little girl would fall asleep leaning against one of her parents with the sound of her father's warm, rich voice and her mother's sweet clear soprano singing: "All creatures of our God and King, lift up your voice and with us sing, Alleluia! Alleluia..." Later, the little girl would wake up for just a moment, long enough to know that someone, usually her dad, was carrying her out to the car to go home where a delicious Sunday dinner was waiting.