It isn’t often that I get to hear the stories of our lives told from our children’s point of view, but after I posted the last blog, my daughter Suzanne texted me this 2006 excerpt from her journal. As a mother this week before Mother’s Day, I share her memory with you with her permission.
Dad drives the cheerleaders in Homecoming parade.
Journal Entry--2006
Out on a back road in Orestes, there is an artesian well—you hear it before you see it. My dad used to pile all of us into the old Chevy convertible, and after we got our ice cream cones at Dor-tees, we would go for a drive out around the winding roads, past the landfill and Martin Paving, past fields oof cattle and corn until Dad would turn down the music of Willie Nelson long enough to say, “Listen.” He would pull up along the side of the road and turn off the engine.
Photo by Angela Kellogg
Over the sounds of birds and cicadas you could hear the gurgling of the well spring coming up from somewhere deep in the ground. It was magical for me as a kid, straining to hear the sound of the water, knowing that even while I slept or ate dinner or worked math problems, the spring was always bubbling up and out of the ground, day in and day out. Once my dad stopped the car, got out, and took me by the hand to see it, even though it stood on someone’s private property. It was amazing, truly. I had never seen water so clear or felt anything so cold. My dad bent me over to take a drink so I wouldn’t get my clothes wet. The water was as chilled and sweet and untainted as an April rain.
In February of this past year, our family made the difficult decision to move out of Madison County to Nashville, Tennessee, where my husband could be a more “hands on” manager in a music company with which he had been involved for some time. Our children who are both serious musicians had expressed intertest in getting more involved in a music community and began to desire the move as well. Toward the end of May, the week before we packed the moving truck and headed south, my dad pulled around our driveway in the old Chevy convertible and told the boys and me to get in. We drove down the familiar streets of Alexandria—the bakery, the Lighthouse Café, Broyles Furniture—curved around Washington Street, drove out past Martin Paving and what used to be the Madison County Landfill (“the only mountain in the county”, we used to joke), past the cornfields just beginning to emerge into decent-sized plants, until dad came to the road where the artesian well gurgled up out of the ground. He turned off the car engine and said, “Listen.” We could hear it, the joyful sound of clear, cool water.
We got out of the car. It had been years since I’d been to the artesian well, so I was surprised to see that the owners of the property had laid a little stone path which curved around to a podium with a guest book people could sign. There was beautiful landscaping—hostas, zinnias, daffodils—blooming around the well. Statues of angels and wildlife stood in their cement stillness as if to pay homage to the flowing water. Beyond the spring down another winding path stood a miniature chapel with a tiny steeple set up for those who wished to meditate and reflect. The boys, sensing the sacredness of the place, remained silent.
Photo by Angela Kellogg
They made their way to the spring which had been connected in recent years to a galvanized pipe so that people could drink from it. They bent down one and a time to drink from the well. I watched their faces as each one smiled, tasting for the first time the cold sweetness which I had come to know so well. “This is good,” whispered Jesse to me as he took another sip.
As we got into the car to leave, an old rusty Oldsmobile pulled up behind us. A heavy-set woman with her hair pulled back in a bandana was driving the car. The back seat was full of children with dirty faces and faded tee-shirts. The littlest boy had on only a diaper. A girl about fourteen got out of the passenger seat. She wore tattered cut-off shorts and a halter top that said “Baby”. Her eyes were lined heavily with eyeliner and mascara, and she smelled of stale cigarette smoke. She only glanced our way briefly, then headed toward the well, an empty gallon milk jug in her hand. We got into our car and drove away.
Photo by Angela Kellogg
A week later we left Madison County for our new home in Tennessee. We packed the back of both of our SUVs full of suitcases, dogs, and movies for the trip. As I was getting ready to close the trunk, I spotted a gallon milk jug. “What’s this?” I asked.
Jesse glanced behind him and replied rather matter-of-factly, “It’s water...from the well.” He began fidgeting with his seat belt, then added, “I thought it would be good to take some with us.”
I shut the hatch, “Yeah, it would be. It would be good,” I said as I got in the car. We drove the back way out of Madison County, country roads lined with corn plants and soy beans, Frankton Elementary School, Rickers, Hutchinson’s Orchard, Florida Station Church of God, the granary....
