“What most people don’t understand about the Southern
family is how deeply our roots are planted in the subsoil of the past.
Nourished by ritual and fortified by necessity, out strength lies in the blood
of all the generations who have gone before us…Like the faded daguerreotypes
that hang from the walls of weather-beaten home places across the South, they
are our heritage.”[1]
 |
| Freda Mae Morgan Cole (Granny) |
The women in my family
are Southern to the bone. They know about life outside of the
South.
They read a lot, and they have traveled. But the South is where we are and who
we are. I come from a long line of what is known as “Cole Women.” The ones I
know who came before me are my grandmother, Freda Mae Morgan Cole (Granny) and
her two daughters: Ruth Elizabeth Cole (Aunt Ruthie) and Martha Virginia Cole
Johnson (my mother). Most of the other Cole Women earlier than that were before
my time (except for Aunt Mayme, and that’s another story).
Our branch of the Cole
family has lived in Davidson County, North Carolina, since it was given a land
grant in the 1700’s. My grandmother died in the Cole home place; my aunt, lost
in dementia, struggles daily to get back to where she was born…and where she
sleeps every night; and my mother now lives a mile down the road.
The Cole Women are a
strange lot. A casual observer might see the quiet reserve and polite demeanor
that marks so many women of the South. A closer inspection reveals qualities
not unlike those of a diamond—beauty, hardness, and many-faceted cutting edges.
One thing must be understood about the Cole Women. Author Lee Smith described
them well when she wrote, "The
biggest myth about Southern women is that we are frail types... fainting on our
sofas. Nobody where I grew up ever acted like that. We were about as fragile as
coal trucks."[2]
 |
Ruth Elizabeth Cole (Aunt Ruthie) & Martha Virginia Cole Johnson (Bid) |
She is clothed with strength and dignity; she can laugh at the days to come.
(Proverbs 31:25)
(Proverbs 31:25)
[1] Donna
Ball, “Fingerprints,” in Donna Ball, Sandra Chastain, Debra Dixon, Virginia
Ellis, Nancy Knight, and Deborah Smith, Sweet Tea & Jesus Shoes, (New York, Berkley Books 2000), 42.
[2] Lee
Smith, quoted on Southern Women Webring,,< http://www.angelfire.com/fl4/southernwomen/>,
2 April 2003, Intro page.
