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With “Christmas time a-comin,’ “I often think of Christmases, now, too long ago, and all those who were a part of my life and helped shape who I am.

I think of my granny who grew up dirt poor and wanted to make something of herself. So, when she earned enough money taking in washing and sweeping yards and, all the while caring for her brothers and sisters.  In time, she bought herself a pair of white tie-up shoes, white stockings and a white nurse’s dress at a bargain store.

And with that, she was transformed into a nurse.

She had been around enough sick folks that she knew what to do so she began her career in nursing. But, she had experienced enough hard times that she was ready to “walk in the sunshine awhile.”

Just how old my granny was when she became a nurse, I don’t know. It seems like all my life.

And, she must have been a good nurse because she got called to nurse for people of means

She nursed people in Headland with a red, brick houses and folks in Dothan with stucco houses at “Pannyma” City Beach. Why, my granny even nursed Gov. George Wallace’s mama over in Clayton.

My aunt worried about my granny because she didn’t have much schooling and was self-trained in the medical field. “Lord,” my aunt would say, “Mother’s gonna nurse folks into their graves,”

If she did, we never knew it.

When I had my first baby, it was the expected thing for my granny to “see about me,”

So, when I got out of the hospital, I first went home to mama. Then, it was time to go back “home,” so my granny went with me. I didn’t have a brick house with a lot of “pretty things,” as she would say. I didn’t even have a washing machine but she filled the house with caring love.

I thought how she had worked so hard to climb her way up to where she had longed to be. To places where she wore white shoes and cotton stockings and was needed and appreciated, perhaps, even loved.    

She was a nurse. Someone, somewhere, needed her.

My granny was excited to be going “home” to the unknowns who needed her love and her care.

Once on the road, she said, loudly to me, with a wide smile, “Well, hit it!”

And, that’s the way it is at Christmas time. We all want to go home to those we love and continue to love in their absence.

It’s Christmas time so, “Hit it!”