Ronda Rich

Syndicated Columnist

The year or the month have now slipped through my memory.

It wasn’t many years ago, that I do remember.

It was the time of winter when dawn creeps in with dull, gray light. Having long been frugal, I keep the temperature moderate during day, adding extra layers of clothing. At night, the thermostat is turned lower, then the electric blanket turned on.

Tink – there are many things I have “learned” him – had never felt the coziness of electric blanket until I freed him from Hollywood. Now, he loves an electric blanket and down comforter.

Many are the times when I turn on the blanket that I think about Mama. We used electric blankets because of how much it saved on the heating bill.

In college, I was a day student.

It took all Mama could scrape together from her sewing room to pay my tuition. To help, I worked two part-time jobs and, usually, three.

One job began when I was a freshman in college, working at the local newspaper while studying journalism. Determined to move from obituaries and occasional court coverage, I decided to take up sports reporting. I wasn’t a sports fan nor knew anything about sports, except what I saw on ABC’s Wide World of Sports. But I studied everything about it and, soon, I was on my way. Within 18 months of my first story, I won Associated Press’ top award and, since no one at AP could remember differently, they proclaimed I was the first female to win.

But this is not about that. It’s about the nights that I covered Friday night football games and other sports stories that stretched long past the moon’s rising. Once, I was covering a Monday night television game between Atlanta and San Francisco when it, because of weather and penalties, ran long.

It was 2 a.m. by the time I drove 90 minutes back to the newspaper. In those days long before technology, I went back to the news room then wrote my story to be ready when the sports editor arrived at 4 a.m. to lay out the section.

Knowing Mama did not sleep soundly until I came home and equally aware that a late night phone call would scare her to the point of “I need a nerve pill” (she had never seen a nerve pill), I drove another 25 minutes home, slipped in the door, knelt beside her bed then whispered why I would be so late.

Returning home two hours later, stories written and filed, Mama, as always, had turned on my electric blanket which warmed me when I slipped into bed. I think often of that motherly gesture and how much it meant.

Back to the winter’s morn those years back. It was 7 a.m. I grunted, pulled the warm covers up and dreaded mightily throwing back the blanket and pulling myself up for another’s day of labor.

Suddenly, a though occurred to me. I turned over on my back, turning the thought over in my mind. There, I studied on my mountain grandparents. Heat came from wood burning stoves, fireplaces and handsewn quilts. I tried to imagine what cold winter mornings had felt like then. From the moment they arose until around suppertime, they knew nothing more than cold in the winter days.

They’d “slop” the hogs, milk the cow, gather freshly laid eggs, feed the mules then patch the barn and pastures. There was little to look forward to. Except dying. Escaping, really. Only then would they leave the harshness of mountain life.

They could not look forward to building a new house or even a new suit of clothing. It was back-breaking work with joy found only in family and church.

These days I still think about it and how blessed I am to have come along two generations later.

It only took one cold winter’s morning to put a reckonin’ on me that I haven’t forgotten since.

Ronda Rich is the best-selling author of the Southern Stella Bankwell series. Please visit www.rondarich. com to sign up for her newsletter.