I. Cooking
1950–Six a.m. on a cold icy morning. We are living in our new home in Tanglewood which has only a few houses–only one other on our block. I know its time for the garbage man. I’ve already had breakfast as usual. My husband and the three children are still asleep. I carry the pot of hot buttered grits (in a double boiler to keep it warm) outside with two spoons and two bowls and put it near the garbage can, hoping it’ll keep warm until the garbage men come.
8 am.– I’m fixing lunches for a five year old, a nine year old, and a fifteen year old. I slice the homemade bread thinking back to the day before when I made it and added the cracked wheat which I cooked first, then the soy flour for protein and the black strap molasses remembering where I had read in the Adele Davis cookbook how one tablespoon of blackstrap was worth the protein of six eggs. I finished the lunches with some of each child’s favorite food.
1960–It’s night. Our middle child is leaving to go to Sarah Lawrence College in New York. The reason it is night is because airline tickets are cheaper at night. I hate to send her off by herself. To make it nicer and to let her know we love her I am tucking a loaf of cracked wheat bread under her arm for her to nibble on. To me cooking is as natural as sleeping and eating. I cooked two or three meals a day for 62 years for my husband. Before he died, he told me, “I have never sat down to a bad meal.”
II. Gardening
Its November. I am enjoying watching the leaves blow down from the pecan tree because I know they’ll become compost. Then Curly rakes them up and carries them to the compost place. We spread out a layer about six inches high, dust it over with fertilizer, then cover with dirt, then water, and repeat that until the pile is five feet. Then he or I turn it with a pitch fork to let in air. We repeat these steps until the leaves have turned into black friable soil. Leaves are like gold to me. My compost pile is the heart and soul of my garden. I grow flowers in order to make flower arrangements. When I have a voluptuous garden of color and beauty I want to share it. I make baskets of arrangements and take them to my writing class, my beauty parlor and my friends. I feel like the Lord grew them so I must give them away. At Christmas I take dried flower corsages to the check out clerks. Beth wrote me a thank you, “I don’t know what I would do if you stop making and sharing your flowers. I wore mine to church at Christmas and got lots of compliments.”
Last year I gathered lots of cilantro seeds. This fall I pulled them off their dry stems I had stored in the garage and took a bowl of seeds with a teaspoon tomeasure and pieces of foil to wrap them in and announced to the Garden Club, “Help yourself to cilantro seeds,” after the Garden Club meeting.
III. Weaknesses
1950–I am the First President of the Garden Club. We are celebrating one year. I have never been a president of a group. But I had been active at church in the Y.P.S. L. When I look back and see myself I see a person taking on all the tasks.
I invite the club to have the luncheon at Pine Forest Country Club. I say the opening prayer. I make the flower arrangements for the table (ceramic lady heads with pretty faces and a hole in the top for the flowers to represent their hats). I chose the menu.
I did not know that a person is a good leader if they delegate the different parts of a program to that many different people. I learned it later. It reminds me of Martha Stewart who writes a whole book about every subject you can think of. And then she comes on t.v. telling how to make things as if she knows everything in life. I listen to her, but I don’t like her.
IV. Walking
Friday, 8:30 am., Feb. 12. Sunny, but windy and cold. Jo Etta and I come out of the house, put the key on the garage table, stop and do knee bends ten times, hold hands (that’s why I have Jo Etta–to hold my hand, so I won’t fall down while walking–like I did April 14 last year and broke my arm).
We walk down the driveway to the end and stop and look over at my grass cutters until I catch their eye, then wave to them as they wave back, then look over on the other side of the driveway to about ten men working on the foundation of a five year old house, hauling dirt and pulling in one of the three large trucks out front. I wave and laugh. (Jo Etta and I had said something funny, so we were laughing.) Anyway we looked friendly and the men waved back. We passed the three trucks and came to Tanglewood Blvd.–a terrible picture of the demolishing of a street–huge clods of cement all in upheaval. The beat, beat of back hoes. We greet a black friend pushing her care–a beautiful white baby. We walk on and greet our friend with the huge dog. Then here comes Joy and her regular walkers, one of whom I touch on the shoulder. I like to touch people. It puts me closer to them. We walk five blocks and turn around and come back. We see tall Joe in his sloppy blue coveralls release his earphone so he can hear me. “What are they doing?” I ask. Joe: “I hope they know.”
V. Flower Arranging and Picture Taking
The way it started was I was making flower arrangements with flowers from my garden all the time. My son was taking pictures of them. Around Christmas we picked out the best picture and made it into a Christmas card and mailed it to a long list of friends. One Sunday at our church Dale and I were looking at the pictures exhibited in the Activity Room and my friend Oneida said, “Lillian, why don’t you exhibit your pictures?” Surprised, I said, “I’ll be glad to.”
I never dreamed of having an exhibition; I am not an artist. I do not paint pictures. It never occurred to me, but we got permission and a year later after Dale had some of the best pictures enlarged–he matted the others–we brought them to the church with the sign, “Grown and Arranged by Lillian Illig and Photographed by Dale Illig.”
We had fifty pictures. The proceeds from selling them went to the church. We were really surprised the church made more than a thousand dollars.
VI. Mother
My mother loved me and helped me in all my projects. She was fun to be with. She tied ribbons around my tea party sandwiches. She made my fairy costume and gilded my slippers for the fairy dance. At 12 years when I finished sewing my unbleached domestic dress, she added appliqued cherries to it. When I worked on my Girl Scout merit badge, she prodded me to finish so that I got a Golden Eaglet and a trip to the first international Girl Scout Camp in Geneva Switzerland. I worked hard at Rice Institute so that she would say, “You get your lessons, I’ll do the dishes.”
Then my husband and I had three children. We loved them and helped them in their different projects.
Our first caught my tender heart and my shyness. It was hard for her to leave home and go to school. We taught her how to ride her bicycle to school every day for self confidence. She hated to hear the teacher read stories that ended sadly like did. But she outgrew these things and became outgoing and became popular at Rice. (Last Fall Fondren Library honored her.)
Our second daughter liked to find out about things to write about. The whole family sat in the car while she ventured alone into the reptile tent at the circus. She and her friend traveled alone on a Greek Freighter whose Captain knew her friend’s father. My husband and I encouraged her to go to Spain for a year to work for Esso Espanol. We did not want to tie our children to my apron strings.
Our third child was different too. We brought out their individualities and let them do what they wished. I loved him and helped him as a ten year old build boats and airplanes by driving him to the lumber yard, the hardware store, the material store, but he had to go in alone. He faced the clerk alone and ordered his material. Of course I had to go back to get more, but I never punished him for not doing it right. He had to learn and when he and his friend went to the bay to launch his boat, my husband tied ropes around them to save them when the boat went down, and it did.
He loved water. Whenever we went on a vacation and came to a lake, we would have to stop and rent a row boat for him to row. He grew up and used his creative talent to draw water wells in India in the Peace Corps.
End Position
The most important thing I did in my life was to have a loving marriage for 62 years.
The next important thing was to raise three children to have self confidence and the ability to go out into the world and have their own families.
The third thing was to love these children so much that they are loving me in my old age and calling or visiting me every day.