The soft clean sheets engulfed my smooth 9
year old legs as they entered my Grandmommy’s bed after my nighttime bath with
pink Dove soap on a warm summer’s night in July. My head hit the soft feather pillow and I
scooted in as close to Grandmommy as I possibly could. I felt safe to be near her in her silky night
gown. After we were settled, she began
to tell me her stories. “These are
feather pillows she would say. They were
made from the feathers in Momma’s feather bed. I wouldn’t have any other pillow
but a feather pillow,” she would say.
“Whoo, there ain’t nothing like them.
When I was a little girl we didn’t have anything but feather pillows and
my Momma got them from our geese.” She
would raise her head up and down and move it around as she spoke as if she had
some sort of nervous habit – the pillow conforming back and forth to her head.
I didn’t really think anything about it because that’s just what Grandmommy did
when she was talking. I just laid there
and listened to her stories that she would tell. It was our nightly ritual. I learned about
the camp meetings that she would go to at the church when she was a little
girl. I learned about the time she
burned 2 chocolate pies during the WWII sugar ration; and how she dumped them
out in the woods to hide the fact that she had wasted the sugar by burning the
pies. I learned about a side of Frog
Jump that I couldn’t experience, but one that I could imagine. I could imagine it because I was familiar
with the place myself.
The
comfort of Grandmommy’s pillow next to my side, with her head in it is
gone. A transient moment
in my life, defines a memory that remains permanently etched in my mind. Yet, while the memory remains, the trust that
was put into my Grandmommy’s presence
in my life slowly begins to fade away as Grandmommy, 87, now suffers from
Alzheimer’s disease. She is no longer
near me and I learn that the trust that
was placed in my Grandmommy’s company will soon be gone. The pillows in The Weight
of Glory, symbolize a moment of rest; a moment of no fear and complete
trust. The pillow; cast in concrete
though freezes a moment in time and captures it permanent. I trust that the pillow will not change. It is captured just the way it is. To last
forever.
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| Cast Concrete Pillows from the Installation, The Weight of Glory, 2017 |
