With Love and Hope in Every Stitch

Written by Datha Beck Darby as told to Linda Darby Hughes

This article is courtesy of Mature Living.

One spring morning in 1952, I sorted through our baby girls’ few little garments. I so wanted to dress up Linda, 2, and Becky, 1, for Easter, but everything was stained and worn.

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We’d always been poor, but, oh, how it hurt to see our babies go without. We struggled to keep a roof over our heads and food on the table. New clothes were out of reach.
As the first grandchild, Linda got a few new things. But when Becky came only 13 months later, she was the only new thing we had. From diapers to coats, Becky never wore a single thing that was new.

Becky was named for my family, the Becks. I was the oldest of seven children. We kids kept Mama busy, but she’d always had help from my Aunt Lora Mae, Daddy’s baby sister.

Lora Mae was 7 when I was born; I never remember being without her. She was my playmate and my protector, my other mother. She couldn’t stand to see me get a whipping, which I often earned, and she stood between me and my just rewards many times. When I was little and wet my pants, Lora Mae would rinse them out, hang them on a bush to dry, and put them back on me before Mama found out.

As we grew older, she remained my confidant, comforter, and my best friend. 
Now, at 18 and 25, we were old married ladies with kids of our own. Lora Mae’s husband, Rush, worked with my Charles in Atlanta. Since we had no phones, televisions, or cars, she often spent the day with me. Her daughter, Pat, was a big girl now, so Lora Mae loved helping with my babies.

I was feeling sorry for myself one morning when Lora Mae came into the kitchen, wearing a big smile and carrying a tiny pinafore dress, starched and ironed till it could almost stand alone. It was white, with tiny green and yellow flowers, and it was brand new!

“It’s for Becky,” she said.

I hugged her with tears in my eyes. “But how? Why?”

She shrugged. “I know what it’s like to be ‘extra,’” she answered simply. “It’s not much, just something I ran up.”

Lora Mae was a great seamstress, but with cloth so dear, all she’d done lately was mending. I fingered the fine cotton material, and suddenly it looked familiar.
Seeing my expression, she laughed, “All right, all right – yes, it was a chicken feed sack. But it was just too pretty to waste. I thought our namesake deserved her own dress for once.”

That Easter, when the family gathered to celebrate Christ’s resurrection, little Becky in her sparkling new Easter dress was a bright spot of hope for all of us.

More than 50 years have passed since that happy day, and God has been good to us all.  Although I may occasionally yearn for a pricey dress from the mall, it’s been a while since anyone in our family really knew how it felt to go without anything we need.

Easter 2003 found us gathered at the Douglasville, Ga., home of Becky and her husband, David. It was a time of celebration for the blessings God has granted us and for remembering old times and those who have gone on. Lora Mae was the oldest in our family, now an honored guest. With Mama gone for many years, Lora Mae ties me securely to my roots. Some of our most treasured memories are of those days when all we had was family.

Looking around at all the happy, well-dressed children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren; the beautiful home; and the nice cars, we smiled as we remembered that other Easter so long ago. Most of these young people had never seen hard times like those. I confess I sometimes wonder if they haven’t missed something important.

Lora Mae can’t thread a needle any more or do a lot of simple things she used to take for granted. As a result of a stroke, she walks with a cane and loses her breath easily. But that day I thought I saw a little spring to her step as I helped her over to a seat at the picnic table. 

Gathered around her was Becky, now 52; Becky’s daughters, Sherry and Cristy; and Cristy’s daughter, 8-year-old Morgan. Last of all we put Sherry’s 10-month-old Amelia, Becky’s granddaughter, into Aunt Lora Mae’s lap. Amid much happy laughter and a few tears, we grabbed our cameras.

At the center of this group of beautiful, strong women, little Amelia wore a white dress covered in tiny green and yellow blossoms, starched and ironed till it could stand alone. She looked so beautiful in it – just as her grandmother, Becky, was in 1952; and her mother, Sherry, in 1974; her Aunt Cristy in 1978; and her cousin Morgan in 1995. 
Somehow, that little dress was, and is, every bit as bright and shining as it was on the day Lora Mae gave it to me. Unlike a lot of things we pay a premium price for these days, it seems you just can’t wear out a good feed sack.

In this day and time, when having new things is often easy and everything’s disposable, a family is rich indeed to have something old – something that holds within its fine, strong seams a family’s memories, a treasure that can’t be bought for any price.

In our family, it’s a tiny, green and white dress. Its careful seams have securely bound the three generations of Beck and Darby women who’ve worn it and hold the promise of those yet to come. 

Aunt Lora Mae saw in an empty chicken feed sack a new dress for a baby girl and hope for a poor young mother who wanted the best for her children. How could I have known then that they already had it?

Linda Darby Hughes is a Christian freelance writer in Douglasville, Ga. She, Datha, and Becky enjoy remembering the past and thanking God for His abounding grace through the years.