For several years in the late 1990s, two of my great-aunts – Aunt Vi and Aunt Hazel – resided at Royal Manor nursing home. It was designed as two long hallways like a letter “U” connected by central gathering, community spaces.
Down one corridor, my maternal grandmother’s elder sister had a room with a roommate, if I remember correctly. Hazel’s mind was strong and clear, her spirit mostly unsettled and her physical constraints dictated reliance on other people, whether in kindness and compassion or not. She knew what was up and was definitely not okay with it all.
Conversely, my paternal grandmother’s younger sister had a room to herself on the opposite Royal Manor corridor. She remained a sweet, pleasant spirit but drifted in and out of lucidity. We had deep conversations about far-distant memories. She could not tell me what or whether she had eaten that day. She did get manicures, apparently.
Here we are seated together on her bed. You can see the hospital nature of the bedframe along with the accent of “homelike” touches in a handmade afghan. Another contrast.
She was child-like as she worked to remove the gift wrap while emanating that giddy, expectant energy.
I remember one visit we sat side by side in rockers on the front porch and admired the sunset together. She talked of her home and that when she returned there someday soon, I should come visit. She would offer me things that she wanted to gift to me. She did not know that her home was packed away in a storage unit nearby and she would never be “going home” again.
Every so often, her body would shudder all over and she’d let out a moan, close her eyes for a moment. I do not know what her diagnosis was. Her pain was fleeting and repetitive, but I am not certain she remembered one to the next, really.
Viola died February 2000 and Hazel died in December 2000 that same year when I was living in New Jersey.
You might say educating is in my blood and these women were paramount in my own formation. Educators, living their Christian service and love instilled by the Shaker-educated youth of Martha Jane Bradshaw Corman, mother, and three of her daughters – Madeline, Viola & Fanny Dean. Two of the sisters taught school at the elementary and middle grades in northern Kentucky while the other, my grandmother, taught in one-room school houses throughout the Bluegrass region of Kentucky, specifically Jessamine County, with names like Sweet Home and Oak Hill.
Fully enjoying summers traveling, they invited the grandchildren-age generation of cousins on their annual summer trips across all these United States. The ORIGINAL aunt camp (*credit: S. C. Mathews – I see you Pebby). And, the original Ya-Ya’s, as we say in our family.
Photo: (left to right) Iva Madeline Corman, Martha Jane Bradshaw Corman, Viola Josephine Corman, and Fanny Dean Corman Mathews, my grandmother.
I remember visiting Frankenmuth, Michigan, as well as author and artist Gwen Frostic’s studio/visitor center in Benzonia. I have a beautiful collection of her work gifted to me, purchased by me and bequeathed to me through the estates’ transitions. It is on that trip with Aunt Vi & Aunt Madeline that I began with Christmas tree ornaments collecting as mementos from my travels.
It feels as though caring is woven in my DNA and was nurtured along by simply spending time with my great-aunts. My grandmother passed when I was in 4th grade living in Pittsburgh, PA, and my memories with her are fuzzy. When I look around my home, I pause to appreciate the things from my family, much of which ties back to them. Any artifact’s value perhaps felt priceless only to me, ultimately. It is the STORIES I crave and these hand-me-downs bring the memories and my soul to rejoice. I want to protect and preserve.
Maybe my heart’s call as service to others honors my ancestors, lives out in legacy. I can confirm I am a lifelong learner – and, most often the hard way. But, if it comes from the heart, is it ever wrong? Let me tell you, if you keep with these ancestry storylines I’m putting down – along the way, your heart will ache. Fair warning.
But, let’s first take a moment to reflect with some levity. Where my educators AT?!
Check out this excerpt from my WKU folk studies professor William Lynwood Montell’s 2011 publication, Tales from Kentucky One-Room School Teachers:
In 1872, the Kentucky State Legislature formally mandated its nine “Rules for Teachers”:
Teachers each day will fill lamps, trim the wicks and clean chimneys.
Each morning teacher will bring a bucket of water and a scuttle of coal for the day’s session.
Make your pens carefully. You may whittle nibs to the individual taste of the pupils.
Men teachers may take one evening each week for courting purposes, or two evenings a week if they attend church regularly.
After ten hours in school, the teachers may spend the remaining time reading the Bible or any other good books.
Women teachers who marry or engage in unseemly conduct will be dismissed.
Every teacher should lay aside from each pay a goodly sum of his earnings for his benefit during his declining years so that he will not become a burden on society.
Any teacher who smokes, uses liquor in any form, frequents pool or public halls, or gets shaved in a barber shop will give good cause to suspect his worth, intention, integrity and honesty.
The teacher who performs his labor faithfully and without fault for five years will be given an increase of twenty-five cents per week for his pay, providing the Board of Education approves.
Okay, with so much to unpack here, is it even possible? Take a moment. Read it again. Read it aloud to someone. I wonder how much of this was still codified when my grandmother was a one-room school house teacher almost 50 years later.
that Kentucky girl 