Not long ago, I learned about the existence of private journals written more than a century ago by a relative on my father’s side, from his ancestral stomping grounds in the mountains of southwest Virginia.
Their author, Mary Margaret Persinger was barely literate, and she lived in a time and place far closer to the 19th century than to the 20th century. She was a widow and grandmother, living with her spinster sister and surviving as a quilter, cook and housekeeper in what today we would call dire poverty.
But she was richer than Midas in the things we hold most precious in the holiday season:
“James (her oldest son) give me a new Bible for my birthday and I love it cause mine was falling to pieces and always be feeling bad taking it in the lords house. I was a little mad cause sweet Jesus knows that James needed him that money but James says that cause he don’t go often enough now it be like he is there with me every Sunday. Lord knows I loves me that boy. I give my old one to Miss Jones cause she don’t got her one. She don’t do her no reading cause she never had her no learning but says it sure feels good having the word of god in her own hands….”
“Some folks gots them kids that when they grown never wants to be round them and here me and sis gots us one (James) that wants us with him forever. Praise be to Jesus. Granddaddy Persinger always say a house aint nothing but four wood walls with a cover. A home is the family that is round them walls and if you take away those walls you still has you a home….”
“Miss Elizas girl say she don’t want her momma or her daughter moving in with her. That don’t make no good sense to me why a child treat their own momma and girl that way. Everyone I got is welcome to come live with me even if we have to sleep five to a bed. Me and sis sleep many a night in a hay barn when we were growing up. Family is family and you do for your family when they need you. To many folks done forgot what it means to be a family….”
“I think (her daughters) Mary and Sara are into it again. I never understand why they not able to get along better. They always in a fuss over some foolness. My boys get in it sometimes but they always settle it fast. Me and sis almost never have us any hard words and I wish my girls could be more like us cause one day we be gone and they only have each other…. I aint never beat my children but lord knows that if they stopped talking to each other I would beat them near to death….”
“Somedays it seem like the world moving so fast that a body never keep up. Most everyday they done invented some new thing to take the place of the old and me and sis starting to feel lost. The old days were hard but we knowed what to do and how to act. Today you hears everyday of men beating their women for nothing and their women doing nothing bout it and people being robbed in plain daylight and when we was little there never was such things cause people was stronger and knowed how to take care of themselves….”
In the journals, Mary Margaret says that she writes so that “when the lord calls me my family wont forget.” I bet she’d be shocked and more than a little pleased to learn that her words were being more read than a century later.
