20 Years, No Surrender:

Let me tell you your first great- great-grandmother story. We lost the lady sitting by the 18-year-old I’m glad I’m not anymore, on this day 20 years ago, the lady whose name you claimed last October & the lady who would be mad if I turned the celebration of the 20th anniversary of her first day in Heaven into a pity party, so I won’t. My favorite Bruce Springsteen song is “No Surrender.” Truth is, it’s a stormy 3:59AM as the album bearing the song powers through earplugs to keep from waking your Jules as my cellphone suffices for both the Walkman & typewriter of your teenage Papa & I’m convinced the song should claim the parenthetical title “Lottie’s Song.” When I hear it, I can’t help thinking of her & how much she made of the dash on her burial marker between first breath & last, how she never waved surrender’s flag from cradle to grave. She’s one of the few people I’ve met that lived life as the one act play it is, no dress rehearsal, no second act. We’re all given a stage, we’re all thespians, how the play turns out is up to us. She told me once she wanted “She Tried” on her tombstone. She must have been Emerson’s muse when he wrote, “nothing great is accomplished without enthusiasm.” Her headstone should read, “She Accomplished.”

Two of her brothers, Walter & Joe, helped her break her arm (a tale she revealed in great detail in her personal journal, & one of her many writings you’ll get to enjoy!) as she attempted to learn to ride a bike as a little girl. She never learned as a girl, but one day, as a grandmother in her early 50s, in Gulf Shores, Alabama, she determined that day was THE day she would ride a bike & she did. She was loyal, the seven girls who founded a friendship on her first day of high school in Birmingham, Alabama after a move from Conyers, Georgia defined rock solid through a lifetime of triumph & tragedy. She wanted to play the organ, so she convinced my grandfather to buy one with lighted keys to help her on the journey. She got excited to watch the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade or in the early spring to have her kitchen smell of vinegar as grandchildren dyed Easter eggs rattling in her good coffee cups, & I’ll remember her joy on Christmas Day 1985 when she found out your Jules said yes & would be pulling up a chair to the family table of strong women, chairs now claimed your big sister & you & as we found out last Saturday, a new aunt will be pulling up next to you two soon.

She was so proud when I won a class superlative in 9th grade, she stood & cheered, it was a touch embarrassing then, it’s more than a touch cherished now. She was convinced, after watching me play one game as a wishbone quarterback, that I would be doing the same for a fellow named Bryant that was running a football powerhouse five miles east of her home at Birmingham’s Legion Field & I would own a Heisman Trophy.

She had grit & resolve when everything came unglued. Your great-great-grandfather passed two weeks before Christmas in 1977. Christmas was on Sunday that year as she visited & the holiday arrived for the first time without him. She made sure that at 10:00 AM, we were in church, excuse limit, zero. Life knocked her to her knees, talking with Jesus kept her on her knees for a little while, I’m sure some of that time on her knees is why I only miss that 18-year-old’s hair, but staying on her knees was not her style. Six months later, disappointment struck me hard. A devastating leg injury put my 16th summer in a cast. She came to visit & one Saturday night it was me, her, two bowls of vanilla ice cream & the Lawrence Welk show. As we watched, she told me one day she’d be playing the organ like Bob Ralston & my left leg & foot would soon operate again like tap dancing Arthur Duncan. Neither happened but while the ice cream was good, the memory is better. In 1996, at a wedding reception, it’s 11:30, we’re ready to leave & we can’t find her. Placing your then 5-year-old daddy on my shoulders to scout the room, he spots her. Asking him “where?” He states, “out there dancing with those girls.” Listening, I hear the popular dance song of the day, “Hey, Macarena.” Looking, I see your soon to be 80-year-old great-great-grandmother dancing out both the night & her heart, the same way she danced, the same way she accomplished every day. She didn’t wait for life to spontaneously combust; she located the fuse & ignited it.

I’m one of five in a lucky club that can say she’s my grandmother. Now you’re paying dues to the great-great-grandchild club. One of my favorite photos of your big sis is from her first summer in the middle of an unexpected overnight stay at the hospital. Your dad took a picture of her sitting in the bed, foot wrapped because it was the only place an IV would stay put, but it was her beautiful face that grabbed my attention. Determined eyes & a coy grin, quite similar to Lottie Belle’s, seemed to say “…don’t worry doc, we got ’em right where we want ’em.” I can only think with your eyes, your beautiful face, & your shared name that this world better hang on, it’s getting another edition of the way Lottie Belle attacked her circumstances, making opportunities out of obstacles, of not being anyone’s imitation but God’s original. I can hardly wait to introduce you to more of Lottie Belle from 12/11/1916 – 8/10/2003, and how she made the most of the dash, but today seemed a good day to start the celebration, a good day to not surrender…