MILLER MEMORIES

Not a day passes without thoughts of the Miller homestead. Surely that is true for most of my Miller relatives. Is it just about family or did these folks put the same indelible imprint on all their acquaintances…I wonder?

Whatever the case, the imprint I carry is something to treasure -perhaps more so as I get older and tend to be more nostalgic. Long ago I tried to capture it in a poem that I entitled “The Priceless Heritage” and that is indeed what it remains.

It must be a misnomer to call the farm a homestead. I have no idea how Grover Cleveland Miller came to own that little farm. His brother settled just around the bend on another farm. In those days, in Shock, WV, everyone farmed. Perhaps everyone worked hard at being self-sufficient; but it seemed to me Grandma and Grandpa Miller were more so than most.

Grandpa Grover was a carver of wood and stone. Isobel wrote of his wood chain (in MarylandMama.blogspot.com); I’ve alluded to table legs and hickory chairs and many a family cemetery marker bears his inscription. He was the neighbor to call upon if you needed anything fixed. He loved life, family and horehound candy. When his wife was in the hospital in Charleston he wrote her often with local news and addressed those letters, “Dear Mrs. Miller.” [I’ve come to appreciate the affection in that as my DH often calls me Mrs. Teel these days.] And he loved music. I don’t remember his fiddle playing, but others do. And still, when I dream of him, he’s singing hymns.

Grandma Oe had her own love of life. I dream of her laughter. Her apron bibs didn’t have straps, but were pinned with large safety pins at the top corners. She was a natural, platinum blond – maybe some Norse genes in there somewhere. When I was young (under ten, surely), she would let me brush her hair – it hung past her hips as she sat in the strait back chair and she’d sit patiently and let me fiddle with it a long time. The only time I ever thought she lost even a little patience with me was when the cow escaped the fence and I was too much of a scared city youngin’ to help shoo it back in. Even then, she said not a cross word.

…that reminds me of an aspect I cherish so about the Miller household. It was always clean and neat. It smelled like biscuits, boiled potatoes and oil cloth. There were many interesting nooks and crannies—the dark attic space on the winding stairway that housed the old spinning wheel, the cabinet between kitchen and dining room that had doors on both sides, a double bench where the twins sat at the end of the table and other furniture that Grandma layered with a new coat of paint most every spring (a couple of those items turned out to be wormy chestnut…sigh). Ah, yes, I remember it well. But most of all I recall – that I cannot recall ever hearing a harsh word spoken in that house.

Priceless, indeed, such a heritage!