Thrumming....

Thrumming. That's supposed to be a loud, incessant repetition of a sound. But that doesn't describe thrumming. Thrumming is more like the beat of a drum that blends so well into the background, its energy carries you even when you're past hearing it.

It's a good word, no? It's a silent hum, like the earth in early spring, not ready to burst into song yet, it's just got that music going on underground, revving up. Quietly.

My Mom used to hum under her voice while she worked in the kitchen. It seemed to me like she worked in the kitchen all the time. I can't see a can of Clabbergirl backing powder without thinking of my Mom and smokey blue windows of winter, all steamed up or jack frost painted from the steam of cooking and baking.

She baked biscuits every day. Sometimes, it might be cornbread or pone, but basically we were a biscuit family. Biscuits, poorman's gravy, and pinto beans. That's what you'd find on the table most days.

We grew a little garden with green onions and ribey looking carrots and straggly lettuce. It was hardrock ground, but it produced. Our lives were hardrock, too. But we didn't really think about it. Had nothing to compare it to, so we figured it was just fine. Looking back, it was more than fine. We didn't have things, but we had everything.

Mom, she was a quiet woman, she'd chuckled under her breath at something she thought or something someone said. There is a voice on the I Love Lucy laughtrack that sounds just like her. She'd say "Uh oh" when Lucy was about to do something funny. And there's someone saying that on the laugh track just like Mom would say it.

Mom made grape jelly from wild grapes. She'd make jelly from anything. I once asked her to make RC cola jelly, but she wouldn't do that. Her grape jelly was the best of all. I think, now, that her recipe was 7 cups of juice and 5 cups of sugar. But I've let it slip by me and I'm not certain. I make good jelly myself, but I make every kind different. She stuck to one recipe and it worked great. I told her one time hers was better than storebought and she made the most pleased sound. Not right then when I told her, but later, at the table, she said, "better 'n storebought" and made that contented sound.

Another thing that always reminds me of Mom is lemon. We had a lot of moments over lemon. When I was five, I'd watch her make lemon pudding or pie. A little disk of lemon would melt in the kettle -- and the lemon would be almost clear and she'd make topping with egg whites and then bake the pie and brown that egg white topping.

One time, when we were staying with my sister in Elsworth, Ohio, we went walking down that long stretch of highway to a little country store. There was a creek there, running along beside the store and we'd get us some little something and sit beside that creek, just me and her, and enjoy our treat. I remember one day it was potato chips and a carton of lemonade. We loved that. It was so good. She would get very pleased over simple things. I was twelve at that time. That means she was about 54 if my math is right. I was born in 1953 and would have turned 13 that year in December and she was born in 1911 and would already have had her birthday on March 21st.

A cat purring -- that's thrumming. Mom had that kind of contentment anytime she wasn't actually riled up about something or worried sick. You know, she had all those mom sayings of her time. "I'm sick and tired..." of whatever. "If I knew then what I know now..." and my favorite, "working and slaving over a hot stove and what thanks do I get for it..."

Well, she didn't get much thanks, really. We were all too wrapped up in ourselves to pay much mind. But when we got pocket change, it was Mom we thought of. I used to buy her those little glass chimes with Japanese letters on the glass. They cost something like 39 cents -- I don't remember exactly. But it was an amount I could save to more easily than anything else.

Once me and my sister, Libby, were walking to town. Didn't have any money, but we thought we'd walk down town just to have something to do. I found a dollar, just as I stepped up on the curb and Libby looked back where I'd found it and saw two more.

We bought Mom a glass cat, with little chains attached to two small kittens. She kept it for years. It got broke and she glued it back together -- said now it matched everything else in her house. She wasn't complaining though, just making a statement.

She'd stand in the doorway of our house up on the hill and watch storms coming. I can still see her in that open doorway, framed by the light of the kitchen, just as day gave into twilight. She loved rain and wind and the between times of morning and night, the same as I do. Sometimes I thought we were like two peas in a pod. She was Aries sun and Sagittarius moon and I'm Sagittarius sun and Aries moon.

When I was a kid, she'd read the same books I read. We liked Judy Bolton and both agreed that Nancy Drew was too stuck up, while Judy Bolton was down to earth. Later, she read Daybreak (Joan Baez), Good Morning, Young Lady (Ardyth Kennally) and My Side of the Mountain (Jean Craighead George). And later still, she read Homecoming and Dicey's Song (Cythia voight). She was reading Homecoming at the time she died.

She worried about me and church. If I went and she didn't, she'd ask me when I got home, "They didn't have you join up, did they?" She was not for joining a church. She told me once, "Don't believe everything the preacher says. He's just a preacher, not God." When i was a teenager, I started going to the little churches that sprung up among the Jesus Freaks. They'd be in laundromats or any little place the JC people could rent cheap. I went to Pleasant Valley Evangelical church in Pennsylvania with the Christian club from school. Jennifer McNeil would drive a bunch of us over to Pa to go to church. I know Mom always wondered about that and what that church was like. It was just us kids going, because it was youth night. Phil Keaggy was our youth pastor. It was the first time I was part of something and I liked it pretty well. But as with all churches, I was a bit outside the main, didn't quite get it the way everyone else seemed to. I think Mom was that way, too.

She believed in Church and God and all that, but she believed in Fairies a little bit more. She left things out for them. And she believed in having something new to wear for Easter. It was very important. She'd make a new outfit for us if she couldn't afford to buy something.

And she knew our old house was full of ghosts. That didn't surprise her and it didn't frighten her. She believed in reincarnation, too. One of her Grandkids was born with a toe bent all crooked. It wouldn't straighten. She said that child was Uncle Pat come back and that toe was a sign. He'd one time cut his toe off in an accident and he stuck it back on, but wrong and it grew that way and healed on turned almost upside down so the toenail was down in the middle of the toe. She didn't have a question about reincarnation. She just naturally believed it.

And like Grandma Hall, her Mother, she believed in signs. If your left hand itched, you'd get some money. If a broom fell across the door, someone was coming and likely it wasn't anyone you wanted to see. If you spilled salt, you'd better toss a pinch over your left shoulder to blind the sprite that knocked it over.

There might be a wry smile when she mentioned church things, but she was dead serious about all of these beliefs. But she tried, oh so hard, to like church. When our kids were little and we got all religious back in the 80's, and started church, we'd take her with us. She'd sit through all those sermons with us, on the hopes we'd be going out somewhere fun when it was over, maybe out to dinner or some such. But also, because going to church was the right thing to do, wasn't it? She add that "isn't it?"

Well, we both liked the singing, didn't we? And like Emerson, I think we both had some of our best philosophical ideas during or enduring a long-winded sermon from a preacher who knew it all.

Mostly, she was just humming under her breath, or even quieter than that, not quite audible. I never could catch what song she had playing,something pleasant, something just under the surface of sound. Something thrumming like earth in the springtime. Not loud and incessant -- It was soft and low and satisfied, like a cat purring or that sweet little song my babies used to have when they sung themselves to sleep. A sound that was barely a sound from someone who understood things just out of knowing and heard things just out of hearing.