A Little Salty to Cut the Sweet

by Sophie Hudson

I don’t judge that woman for one second, by the way. I’m all too aware that, during football season, I’m pretty much one play away from a total nervous breakdown at any given point in time. And if you think I’m kidding, just ask my daddy, who had to sit with me at Long John Silver’s in Starkville and talk me off the emotional ledge after a particularly nasty loss to Auburn in the mid ’80s.

  Sister and I need not have worried at the 2009 Egg Bowl, though, because the pretty Rebel fan to our left was a nonfactor. She yelled for her team, which was certainly to be expected, but when the Bulldogs scored seventeen points in the third quarter and jumped out to a fourteen-point lead, our Rebel neighbor gave up cheering and comforted herself by talking on her phone, then resorting to some rapid-fire texting for the remainder of the game. It’s a shame the Rebels didn’t have her thumbs playing on offense—they were blazing fast and probably could have run about a 4.3 forty-yard dash.

  The girl acted oblivious to a positively raucous Scott Field, which was the loudest I’ve ever heard it. Eventually the noise hit a level that couldn’t possibly increase, so people took their cheering to the next level and started to jump. It didn’t matter how old they were, how young they were, or how fit they were—everyone jumped. And by the beginning of the fourth quarter, the stadium wasn’t so much a building as it was a living, moving, cowbell-ringing creature. The sound was like a thousand thunderstorms pounding on a thousand tin roofs—all set to the rhythm of techno music blaring through giant speakers. It couldn’t have been fun for the loyal Rebels who were still scattered throughout the stands. But for the Bulldogs?

  Oh, make no mistake.

  It was glorious.

  The smile on our little guy’s face was as wide as the Mississippi River as he soaked in the craziness and the chaos of Davis Wade Stadium, and one look at him let me know the die was cast. He was a Bulldog too. It was oddly sweet to know that the matter of his college loyalty was settled—at least for the time being. Mock me if you must, but there’s a definite “awwww” factor to knowing your child has decided that he’s a part of your team, so to speak.

  Once the game was over, Sister, Alex, and I stayed behind to savor the postgame atmosphere while David and Barry made a beeline for Daph’s tailgating tent. The three of us stood in front of our seats and watched players circle the field, holding the Egg Bowl trophy high above their heads while the fight song ricocheted off the field house and wrapped the bleachers in the sounds of “Hail State.” Eventually we joined the crowd of folks who were slowly walking down the south ramp of the stadium. Alex hopped and jumped more than he walked, and every once in a while Sister or I would have to remind him to stay with us and not get too far ahead. The maroon hood of his Mississippi State sweatshirt twisted and danced all the way down the ramp; there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that he’d caught the fever.

  And the only prescription?

  MORE COWBELL.

  I’ve heard my pastor say more than once that, if we don’t keep it in check, college football can be an idol—especially in the South, where national championships abound and people can quote a prospective quarterback’s passing percentage easier than they can quote a passage of Scripture.

  I know exactly what he means. I have a personality that tends to err on the side of obsessive, and if I’m not careful, I can get caught up in the hype of a new season, in the off-the-field message-board drama, in the prospect of championships and trophies and recruiting dominance. And that’s why the 2009 Egg Bowl—a day when the Bulldogs won 41–27, a day that turned out to be one of my favorite memories ever—is a perfect picture of what I want for our boy and what I don’t want for him. All at the same time.

  Confused yet?

  Stay with me.

  I will absolutely love it if Alex grows up and wants to go to college at State. I will be thrilled to pieces if he is the third generation of our family to earn a degree there. I will be beside myself if, ten years from now, David and I spend five or six fall weekends a year in Starkville, hanging out with our son and cheering for the Bulldogs and serving plates of pregame fried catfish to him and to his buddies. It would tickle me to no end.

  But.

  I want so much more for Alex Hudson than thinking the end-all, be-all of life is to sit in a stadium and watch twenty-two guys battle it out on a field. I want so much more for him than viewing the numbers on a scoreboard as a gauge for happiness. I want so much more for him than basing the sum total of his identity on an institution, a sports team, a career, or a player.

  Because what I want for him more than anything else is for him to follow Jesus with every bit of the fervor, passion, and excitement we saw that day in Starkville. If he is going to completely abandon himself to any purpose, any cause, any greater good, please, Lord, let it be Jesus.

  Please.

  From the time Alex was a baby, I’ve prayed Ephesians 3:16-19 for him: “that according to the riches of his glory he may grant you to be strengthened with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith—that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may have strength to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God.”

  As a mama, it’s good for me to remember that passage. I mean, I’m crazy about football, but I have sense enough to know that Paul wasn’t writing to the church at Ephesus about the roots that run underneath the turf at Scott Field, you know?

  Undoubtedly there’s a time and a place for game-day enthusiasm. There’s a time and a place for team loyalty, for family tradition, for ringing a cowbell, and for jumping up and down in a stadium.

  But I pray that those things are never the objects of our little guy’s worship.

  I guess it’s not too far outside the realm of possibility that by the time Alex is an adult, there will be some church somewhere that incorporates cowbells, Jumbotrons, and “Sandstorm” into their music ministry (though I pray my sweet mama isn’t alive to see it; she still hasn’t gotten over the fact that we’re members of a church here in Birmingham where drums and instruments that require electricity are a regular part of our worship services). Even so, I hope Alex knows that a Saturday at Davis Wade Stadium will always pale in comparison to knowing, loving, and serving the living God. I hope he knows that there’s no greater adventure than following wherever the Lord leads.

  And I just wanted to go on the Official Spiritual Legacy Record and make that perfectly clear. Because as a friend of mine said one time, “Football is a great game, but it’s an awful god.”

  However, I think it’s worth noting that if the Bulldogs can beat the Rebels every November until Jesus returns—well, there’s not a doubt in my mind that it will make eternity all the sweeter.

  Especially since I’m fully convinced that there will be some cowbells mixed in with all those harps and lyres and trumpets in heaven.

  And I’m pretty sure that Sister and Daddy would agree.

  Go ’Dogs.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Saturday Lunch and the Fine Art of Funeral Planning

  IT’S NO SECRET that Southerners love their grandmothers. People in other parts of the country love their grandmothers too, of course, but in the South we tend to put them on a bit of a pedestal. We even give them funny names: MiMi, Grand, Shug, MawMaw, Honey, Nana, GiGi—and that’s just the tip of the MeMaw iceberg. Since I called both of my grandmothers “Mamaw,” I was in the Southern grandmother nickname mainstream, but David—well, he hit the jackpot. He grew up with two grandmothers who were affectionately called Mammy and Sissie.

  Those are some good’uns, y’all.

  Mammy died when David was a little boy, but Sissie was an ever-present matriarch throughout his childhood, high school days, college years, and adult life. She didn’t rule with an iron fist by any stretch of the imagination; she preferred to make the occasional pointed suggestion with a can of Aqua Net in
one hand and a glass of sweet tea in the other. If she was playing bridge with her friends, she’d trade that glass of sweet tea for a glass of Pink Catawba wine, but only in moderation, of course. Sissie was far too sensible to dabble in excess.

  Unlike many women of her generation, Sissie worked outside the home. She and her husband, Bill, owned a floor-covering business, and when Bill died unexpectedly of a heart attack at forty-nine, Sissie became one of the few full-time businesswomen in 1950s-era Myrtlewood. Martha has told me many times that there wasn’t a single aspect of the floor-covering industry that Sissie—who was “smart as a whip! just as smart as a whip!”—didn’t know backward and forward, and her hard work kept Cooley Tile going. Sissie eventually sold the business, but she worked until she was in her early seventies, drove a car until she was in her eighties, and swept her driveway until she was well into her nineties.

  A couple of years ago David, Alex, and I made a day trip to Myrtlewood, mainly so we could visit Sissie. Even though she was 101 at the time, she’d been in a local nursing home for only about five years. Before that she lived in the house she and Bill had built on a wide boulevard in the center of town. Until she fell and broke her hip one day when she tried to sit down in her recliner and misjudged the distance, one of her very favorite activities was raking the yard. David and I actually gave her a really good rake when she turned ninety-three—NINETY-THREE—and she was so thrilled by it you’d have thought we’d given her buckets of diamonds and gold.

  Only, truth be told, Sissie wouldn’t have enjoyed buckets of diamonds and gold nearly as much as she enjoyed that rake. She was practical to a fault.

  Sissie adjusted remarkably well to life in the nursing home, in large part because Martha visited her at least twice a day. Honestly, I’m not sure which one of them depended on the other more: Sissie loved Martha’s company, and Martha loved taking care of Sissie. Since Martha’s husband, Dan, died after a long battle with cancer when Martha was still in her fifties, she and Sissie had been inseparable for the better part of twenty years. And when Sissie moved to the nursing home, there wasn’t a single aspect of Sissie’s new living situation that Martha didn’t supervise, from medication to laundry to meals. Martha even made sure the hairstylists and nurses’ aides were aware of Sissie’s high expectations for her personal appearance. Martha reminded them time and time again that Sissie liked her hair to look pretty, and when they seemed to have trouble remembering the finer points of Sissie’s hairdo, Martha left a note for them on Sissie’s closet door:

  Please help her keep her hair in place and lift her hair a little bit so it will stay set until Thursdays. It will not stay set if it gets wet.

  Many, many thanks,

  Martha

  P.S. Thanks for all you do for my mother.

  Martha actually gave a strong hair-care word when she pointed out that “it will not stay set if it gets wet.” That’s precisely why legions of mamas stick only their legs in the pool when they take their kids swimming. Furthermore, I believe that Martha has provided the perfect way for me to answer the next time my fellas want me to go on one of those theme park rides where you have to ride a faux-wood boat through a man-made monsoon: “IT WILL NOT STAY SET IF IT GETS WET.” That’s a hard hair truth.

  I may need to pause for a minute and give the Lord a hand clap of praise.

  Anyway, when the first note didn’t do the trick, Martha’s frustration grew, so she added a second, more direct note to the closet door:

  Please don’t brush Mother’s bangs straight back anymore.

  Thanks,

  Martha

  Oh, Martha meant business about those bangs. And that last note, by the way, is as close to a Martha Smackdown as you can get. But really, if you think about it, we should all be as fortunate as Sissie to have someone who consistently advocates for our medical needs as well as the proper styling and care of our bangs. Martha took Sissie’s hair standards seriously, and she stood firm when those standards weren’t met. I’m pretty sure that’s biblical.

  During her time in the nursing home, Sissie remained sharp as a tack mentally, but physically she had a tougher time. And when David, Alex, and I set off on our day trip (Remember when I mentioned that? About sixty-five paragraphs ago?), we knew she had been dealing with some new-to-her issues. She was sleeping more and having some respiratory trouble, but even so, we were hopeful she’d be better soon. My mama, however, anticipated that our visit to the nursing home might be more difficult than we thought, so she asked us—and Martha—to come by her house for lunch before we went to see Sissie. My parents and Martha have been in the same Sunday school class since I was in third grade, so Martha has been like family since long before David and I got married. Plus, Mama’s spiritual gifts are hospitality and mercy, and those gifts? Well, they like to make everybody feel better.

  We arrived at Mama and Daddy’s about the same time Martha did, and Mama had prepared one of my favorite lunches: turkey divan, butter beans, strawberry congealed salad, rolls, and ice cream pie. Mama had decorated her dining room table by tucking hot-pink blooms into vases and underneath table runners and around an impressive array of candlesticks. I laughed to myself, because if I tried to replicate the same look in my own dining room, it would look like an azalea bush exploded into a hundred scattered pieces. But on Mama’s table? It was a stunning symphony of spring.

  After the usual pleasantries, our lunch conversation turned to a wedding that a friend of Mama’s had directed a few months prior. In most Southern churches there is a female church member who handles the wedding-directing duties for the congregation, and her service is more valuable than many people realize. For one thing, this woman steps in to offer wise counsel if, say, an overzealous bride wants to bedeck the baptismal font with iridescent tulle and four feet of twinkle lights. She also makes sure the wedding music is appropriate for a house of worship, because while “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?” might have moved a bride to tears when she was in fifth grade and pictured herself singing it to her Prince Charming on her wedding day, that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best fit for a seven o’clock wedding in a conservative Presbyterian church. I once even heard about a Methodist wedding where, in a shocking breach of church policy, a bride and groom incorporated a boom box and an instrumental track of Clint Black and Lisa Hartman-Black’s late ’90s hit, “When I Said I Do,” into their ceremony. They opted to sing it to each other after lighting the unity candle, and while it’s very touching that they felt that way about one another, a good wedding director will tell brides (and grooms) that getting through the wedding ceremony without picking up a microphone to sing a country duet is a fine and noble goal indeed.

  A wedding director also plans where the various members of the wedding party will stand during the ceremony, so her presence at the wedding rehearsal is critical. I’ve been in weddings where the director ran a rehearsal like a military exercise, to the point that the other bridesmaids and I muttered various iterations of “She scares me” under our breath while we practiced holding our bouquets just as the wedding director instructed: tulip blooms to the left, stems at a slight angle, right hand cradling the base of the bouquet, DO YOU UNDERSTAND?

  For the most part, though, wedding directors tend to be gracious, warm, and charming, and since they’re such an integral part of the wedding rehearsal and the wedding day, they’re typically invited to the bride and groom’s rehearsal dinner. Mama’s friend—we’ll call her Glenda—knows all about the rehearsal-dinner routine. She has directed hundreds of weddings over the last twentyish years, and as a result, Glenda has spent many a Friday night in a local restaurant/country club/family member’s home while she enjoyed Some Form of Chicken Breast along with tearful toasts and general pre-wedding merriment. But for one particular wedding Glenda directed the previous February, an invitation to the rehearsal dinner never arrived. It was an unprecedented development in Glenda’s stint as the church wedding director. And when Mama relayed this bit of news to Ma
rtha, a look of utter horror crossed Martha’s face.

  “Ouida!” Martha exclaimed. “You don’t mean!”

  “I do mean!” Mama replied. “They didn’t send her an invitation. Never even mentioned it!”

  “Ouida! I’ve just never in my whole life! I’ve never! After all the work it takes to direct a wedding? And they just didn’t invite her? I’ve never!”

  By then David, Daddy, and I were eyeballing each other, knowing full well that it was pointless to try to inject any perspective into the tale of wedding-director woe. After a few minutes, though, I couldn’t resist, so I said, “You know, I think I’d be relieved if I were Glenda. I’d much rather be at home than spend two hours at a formal rehearsal dinner.”

  Mama and Martha didn’t say a word, but they stared at me like I had horns covered with white satin and seed pearls growing out of my head. Mama was no doubt feeling like she had failed at teaching me the finer points of Southern wedding etiquette, so I decided the safest course of action was to change the subject.

  “Martha, how’s Sissie doing? Is she starting to bounce back?” I asked, all the while silently double-dog-daring David and Daddy to bring up the name Glenda again.

  “You know,” Martha answered, “I think she’s doing okay. She’s definitely not as strong as she was the last time you saw her, but she’s hanging in there. She’s remarkable, Mother is. She really is remarkable!”

  Martha’s tone was cheerful enough, but I’ve known her since I was seven years old. I spent countless hours at her house when David and I were buddies in college. I’ve been her daughter-in-law for more than fifteen years. Seeing her twist her napkin and look down at her plate while she talked about Sissie told me everything she wasn’t saying. Regardless of how she sounded, she was worried. And on some level, I think, she was scared.

  After we finished our turkey divan and put the hurt on the ice cream pie, David, Alex, and I rolled away from the table and got ready to head to the nursing home. Martha wanted us to run by her house first, so we said good-bye to Mama and Daddy and drove the four whole blocks between their place and Martha’s. We’d been inside for just a few seconds when Martha called me to her guest bedroom.