On the 4th of July, I celebrate the independence of our country, but it is also a day when my heartstrings tug me back to memories of my Aunt Earline who was born July 4th, 1919. She was always full of fireworks, but she was never free.

Earline was my mother’s older sister. She lived at The Cedars (the Marshall home place) until her death in 1999. Her life was full of work and challenge. She was, for all intensive purposes (and there were many), a grandmother to me.

A young Earline in the kitchen at The Cedars farmhouse.

My aunt was a bit complicated. She was left with debilitating asthma as a result of Scarlet Fever that nearly took her in childhood. For the rest of her life, she struggled to breathe and suffered wretched asthma attacks. Inhalers for asthma sufferers did not exist in those days. I can remember my mother recounting memories of my grandfather burning various plants, like “rabbit tobacco”, in desperate attempts to help her breathe. They didn’t know what else to do. She would cough blood and pieces of flesh from her lungs.

Earline nursed her mother through breast cancer, camping by her bedside, changing oozing bandages and watching the disease slowly consume her precious “mammy”. Earline was 24 when her mother died and she found herself hurled into another world of caregiving. She became the guardian of my mother, who was only nine. As the new woman of the house, she was expected to cook, clean and preserve food for the family, feed the field hands and work at the tobacco barn to assist her older brother in their only source of income. Between sickness, the depression, war and caregiving, she never had the opportunity to pursue a young woman’s dreams. She never married, learned to drive, or worked outside the home.

Earline was known for her “cranky disposition”. Is it any wonder? She loved deeply, but she always resented the loss of her own identity in the fulfillment of her noble choice to stand by her loved ones. She and her older brother, Luke, who also never married, continued to operate the farm while two other brothers and my mother flew from the nest.

Finally, around the late forties, an asthma inhaler became available to Earline and it improved her physical existence. She was prescribed a nebulizer (now known as a vintage DeVilbiss #40, I think), a contraption that converted life-saving bronchodilator liquid to a fine mist for inhaling. It had a glass bowl and a rubber bulb pump. The precious liquid was placed in the bowl by medicine dropper. As air was pumped over the bowl and out a mouthpiece, the mist could be delivered to the respiratory system, bringing ecstatic relief to spasmic lungs. I remember vividly how Earline handled the device with such delicate care. She would clean it ever-so-carefully and store it exactly in its original position inside its formed, satin-lined box. It was her lifeline and was always with her. When she would go out she would pack it in her purse, which stayed tucked under her arm where she could protect it at all times. Every now and then, I would see her peek into the purse just to reassure herself the precious object was safe.

My mother worked and after I was born, guess who was expected to babysit me. I think the family always took for granted that because Earline was homebound she was obligated to servant hood.  Mama would drop me off in the mornings and pick me up when she got off work. I was a sickly infant and poor Earline found herself saddled with yet another needy generation.

I grew up in the supplemental care of Earline and my Uncle Luke. I spent as much time on the farm as I did at home with my parents. I will be eternally grateful to Earline and I miss her, especially today. Although she could be cranky, some of my fondest memories were formed around her. We had tea parties in the yard and took walks across the farm to the creek where my driveway now crosses. She was a resentful, but fabulous cook. I can still see her popping biscuits into the woodstove oven and I have never tasted an apple pie that touched hers. We stuffed sausages and made jelly in a black pot over a fire pit. We churned butter in a crock and laundered clothes on a washboard. She showed me how to make a toothbrush out of a sourwood stick and sew quilt squares. Every day, she prepared an amazing array of meats, vegetables and sweets to feed farm helpers, Uncle Luke and me. Then when my mom came home from work tired and weary, Earline would set her a place at the table too.

I was a willful child. Earline grumbled about keeping me and she often tested her improved pipes on me or chased me with a switch. But when no one was looking she would hold me on her lap and rock me to sleep in her famous rocking chair. On a hot day, she would stretch a cool, white sheet across the settee in her room and lay me down for a nap, gently stroking my brow. She rescued me from snakes, bees and spiders. She dressed my wounds and dried my tears many a day.

Uncle Luke lived on one end of the farmhouse and Earline on the other and whenever they would meet in the middle, there would be an altercation of some kind. They would die for each other, but couldn’t stand to be in the same room together. It became something of a family comedy.

Earline at my house on one of her really sweet days in 1984. My favorite picture of her.

As the years progressed, Earline continued to “come out” with her angry behavior. Looking back, I think the lack of oxygen to her brain or perhaps dementia, was in play. After Uncle Luke passed, she became almost intolerable sometimes. She was like a wounded creature and would often bite the hand that “fed” her. We jokingly compared her to Anne Ramsey’s maniacal and overbearing character, Mrs. Lift in the 1987 movie “Throw Momma from the Train“. That said, every now and then, she would touch us with a glimpse of her big ol’ caring heart with some unexpected act of kindness or shocking comment.

When I graduated from high school, Earline was so proud and got all dressed up for the ceremony. Before we left, she presented me with a huge box. I wondered what in the world it could be; she could only shop if my mom drove her to town. Inside was a completely hand-sewn piece quilt that she had worked on for months. On top of the quilt was a letter that began, “I will never forget the first day that your school bus stopped in front of the house and you didn’t get off. I cried…..”

Happy Birthday to Earline whose fireworks burn forever in my heart.