Family Roots and the Virtuous Woman

     I have this dilemma when people ask me where I’m from.  I honestly don’t know what to tell them. This is not because I feel that I’m from nowhere, but because I feel I’m from two different places.  I have lived in the Appy Mountains so long, that people in the Swamps of Georgia would probably consider me as “being from” Virginia.  However, “holler rules” say that if you weren’t born here, you’re not “from here”.  It may sound harsh, but I kind of like the tightness of the groups.  I’m accepted by both, mostly.  I have some little mountain babies so that helps with the locals; however, my family always indoctrinates them with ideas of the “south” (aka deep south, dirty south, whichever you prefer) so that they know their southern(er) roots.  This lets me know that at least they think of me as being from there, or at least from them.  I don’t feel this to be a disadvantage in my life.  I love having two sets of roots, it makes me versatile (as long as I stay south of the Mason Dixon line anyway).  There is one thing that makes me very homesick for my birthplace, my family.  I miss my cousins, my aunts and uncles, fresh peaches, my mom’s pecan orchard with gorgeous old trees , and I miss my Nanny.  I so wish that I could be close to them sometimes, especially my Nanny.

     I don’t know about you, but there’s something about the women in my family, the matriarchs specifically, that just makes me feel warm and fuzzy on the inside.  Where I come from, genetically speaking, the women are the heart of the family, the men are the head, and God is the soul.  Maybe you don’t like that kind of traditionalism, but I love it.  I find it comforting, natural, and (most importantly) biblical.  These are things that are important to me in a family unit. 

     Going to visit my Nanny, my only living grandparent, reminds me over again that the woman’s place in a family is so important.  She is in so many ways the hub of our family.  Living so far away from my relatives makes it pretty hard to be especially close to them, but with most of my family, there’s this awesome way that we can just pick up on conversation as if we spoke yesterday, not 6 months ago. There’s a connectedness I feel to them, which is something we all need in life.   If you don’t know this already, the Aldridge family is a pretty large one.  My Nanny has nine children, who all have between 2-4 children, who are in turn growing up and having children of their own (and a few of them are old enough to do the same).  There are more than 90 of us.  I was going to do the math, but it gets overwhelming, and honestly, I lose track even when writing it down.  At last count, two years ago, there were exactly 90, and I know of at least 5 that wouldn’t have been in that count, maybe more (I couldn’t say for sure).   It must be hard to be the hub of that many people.  She holds so much responsibility; you see, no matter how close we are to each other or even how often we visit Nanny, she’s just innately special to all of us.  She’s the warm and fuzzy feeling we get when we think of the word “family”. 

     In my mind, Nanny is beautiful, smart, and basically the perfect wife and mother.  Am I looking through some sort of smoky lens and perfecting her?  I don’t know, but I don’t care.  She’s special.  I live in fear of her old age and what it is doing to her (ie making her forgetful), and I live in fear of the day she may leave us.  I know everyone else feels that way too, and I’ve talked with some of my cousins about it, but it made us feel worse, so we dropped the subject.  In all of this, I’m so very much like a child.  I want to cry when I think of her forgetting things, because I want my Nanny to stay just how I imagine her, I want her to be around to see my kids grow up, I want to scoop her up and move her in with me so I can put her in a plastic bubble where she can’t fall and get hurt.  Being so far away probably feeds this fantasy since I do imagine her much more often than I actually see her.   In other ways, it makes me treat her almost like a child, trying to do things for her without her noticing when I’m around or practically forcing her to go out to dinner and pick the place.  I am such a practical person in so many respects, but going to see Nanny just makes me a little nostalgic (or maybe a lot). 

     I used to think of the Proverbs 31 woman as my bitter enemy.  I mean, who can live up to that kind of pressure?  You have to do ALL of that to be considered a virtuous woman for crying out loud??  Then, I went to a conference break out session about being a good hostess.  The speaker pointed out that the Proverbs 31 woman did all of these things throughout her lifetime, not all at once.  It became clear to me then that being the virtuous woman was a journey, not a daily goal.  Why it didn’t occur to me (and many other women) that this woman couldn’t have been a stay at home mom AND a working mom all at the same time, I’ll never know.  It is probably because we get caught up in the hugeness of that list that we don’t think about the amount of time it would take to become the master of so many traits.  I guess that’s why I idolize my Nanny; I see her towards the end of that journey, and I want to be that.  However, my yearning for such will make me focus on the end of the journey, not the blessing of travelling it. 

     I feel this way about my mother too.  I have seen her on her virtuous journey much more than I did my Nanny, but it doesn’t make it any less impressive.  I then compare my place on the virtuous journey timeline to my mother’s and then my Nanny’s, and I am in awe of the beauty of the female role in a God centered family.  The heart, the place where emotions are, the place where comfort and acceptance are found, the place where hurt goes away, the place where Daddy can be held up(even though he’s big and strong).  Isn’t womanhood a wonderful gift? 

     There are times when I think washing one more dish or changing one more poopy diaper is going to make me scream, but what a privilege to be the heart of my little family.  I can already see in the eyes of my children and nephews that my mom “Nana” is to them what Nanny is to me, the Virtuous woman.

    On the long ride home from visiting my family in southern Georgia, I was thinking of how hard it is to leave once I get down there.  In the movie, Sweet Home Alabama, Reece Witherspoon’s character says, “My life in New York works… But then I come down here... and this fits too”.  I can relate to that idea completely.  I know my visits only consist of hanging around my Nanny’s house and not venturing out into the real world she lives in, but I really do feel connected to that place.  I wonder more and more if I would have that feeling if she wasn’t there.  I don’t know, but I don’t ever want to find out.  Then I realized that an idea that probably fits me better is found in To Kill A Mockingbird.  Scout is talking to Dill about running away and says, “I wonder why Boo Radley never ran away” to which he answers, “Maybe he doesn’t have anywhere to run to.”   That’s the catcher for me. That is why I think of Georgia in such a sentimental way.   I always have somewhere to run away to, somewhere where the world I’ve built can’t find me, somewhere where people love me just because I was born, somewhere where I can cry and complain, somewhere where they’ll give me sweet tea and hug me when we greet and when we part, and somewhere where I don’t have to have my hair perfect (which is good because that is an impossible task in that humidity).  Georgia is where I can run away to, or maybe it’s Nanny’s house.  My child thinks those two ideas are the same, as do my nephews.  Georgia=Nanny’s and Nanny’s=Georgia.  Maybe they are right.  I know that no matter what I’d go visit my other relatives, but Nanny is part of my heart, the part that keeps me walking down that virtuous woman path.  My biscuits will probably always taste like crap, and my dumplings are microscopically thicker than Nanny’s, which ruins the whole batch, and when it comes to stains, my child bypasses me to get my mother’s help, and she is always going to be better at throwing a get together than me, but I’m sure in the future, I’ll have traits that my kids and grandkids want too.  Nanny’s better at me than basically everything, as is my mother (which Princess tends to point out), but one day, I’ll have to be the heart of a downline of descendants myself, and what a blessing.

     There’s a saying out there that you “can’t have roots and wings”, but I don’t look at it that way.  I don’t feel like a little bird that has been groomed to fly away.  Instead, I feel more like a tree that began as a seed that fell into the ground.  As I get older, my roots grow even deeper while my branches reach higher and form their own forks.  I can be grounded in the background of the virtuous women before me, which helps me as I become the heart of a family myself.   Maybe one day, I’ll be home to many people.  I hope my example points them to Christ as those ladies who came before me have for their children and grandchildren. 

Here’s my prayer to all of us ladies who are or will become the heart of a family one day:

“Dear Father, thank You so much for giving me the responsibility of being the heart of this family.  Help me to always remember that You are the most important member.  Help me to remember how important the role of the men who lead the family is as well.  God, walk with me down this virtuous woman path, please help me to be strong in my journey.  I want to give You the glory for my family’s success, and I want to ask forgiveness where I’ve failed You in my efforts.  Be with my sisters who are struggling with their place in the family unit.  I lift them to You, God, because being the heart is so wonderful, but God it can be so hard.  I lift up those ladies who don’t have the great examples that I do.  Please show them what a virtuous woman should be.  We praise you for the good and bad, God, and we acknowledge that Your will is perfect.  We love You, we love You, we love You.  Amen.”

For your viewing pleasure, I've added some pictures from our trip...