Blossoming of my blue hydrangeas this spring triggered a trip down Memory Lane. When I was ten years old, we lived catty-cornered across from Mrs. Birdie and Mr. Amos, an old grandparent couple (probably in their fifties). A green lawn spread in front of their white Mississippi home, complete with front porch and rocking chairs. Mrs. Birdie baked a famous chocolate meringue pie with one bite making you think you had died and gone to heaven. She also grew a beautiful flower garden anchored by her blue hydrangeas.
Behind the house was Mr. Amos’s remarkable Grade A dairy. When he gave the tour to his pastor’s daughters, the McGee Girls, he said, “The milk is never touched by human hands.” We could see the process from the milking machine attached to the cows udders all the way to the shiny silver marbles that either released or closed the entrance to the opening of the milk cans. We found this operation really remarkable for a farm on the edge of Pontotoc County, Mississippi.
Mr. Amos made a deal with our parents that if we brought a half gallon Mason jar down at milking time, he would fill it in exchange for a quarter. As the oldest McGee girl (and responsible?), it became my job to go down. I loved watching him move that marble to allow a clean catch in our jar.
One day, when I had started home with the sweaty jar, it slipped out of my hands and broke on the ground. I remember the panic. Quarters were hard to come by in our household, and Mr. Amos was doing us a big favor by furnishing milk. Before I could even think what to do, I heard Mr. Amos calling me. He had seen and knew my problem. He got a mason jar and filled it, saying we could keep this accident between us. When I got home, it turned out that Mama had seen it, too. She sent me back to Mr. Amos to give him an additional quarter.
I doubt that those two adults, Mr. Amos and Mama, had any idea the impression this incident would make on me or the lessons I was learning from it – compassion, forgiveness, honesty – and seeing value in a barefooted, pigtailed, ten-year-old girl.
In the interim of my life, I have learned enough chemistry to know that the hydrangeas will reflect the acidity of the soil content by being either blue or pink. Mine shows a little hesitation in one blossom, but I hope they will remain Mrs. Birdie blue. I also hope I will pass along good life lessons to the children in my life as unconsciously as Mr. Amos and Mama did.