A Strong and Courageous Woman
I once knew a strong and courageous woman.
Her name was Mary Kathleen Bennett. She was my maternal Nana.
I was a teenager when she died. I wished I had more time with her.
I could not know then that later I would write a book titled Ten Kids, Two Lovebirds, and a Singing Mermaid and I would put her steely strength, her kindness, and her sense of style and spirit into one of my main characters.
I started writing this story last August during an incredibly sad time in my life. You could say I channeled my Nana.
As a child, I saw my Nana’s warm smile and felt the gentle hugs, and I loved the way she made her sweet potatoes with extra brown sugar at Christmas. I smelled the cigarettes she smoked, the scent mixing with her perfume and Jergen’s lotion.
Mary Kathleen Bennett was born in 1908 in Texas. Her mother was pregnant with her brother when she was two years old. A week after her brother was born, Mary Kathleen’s mother died of “blood poisoning.”
Mary Estelle was in her twenties. Mary Estelle’s husband, Carl, decided it would be best if he ran off into the great blue yonder and abandoned his children, and so he did, and Mary Kathleen never saw her father again.
Let’s pause on this. Sweet Mary Kathleen was two years old.
Her mother died.
Then her father left. I don’t know why he made the decision he did.
Mary Kathleen and her new baby brother were passed off to this relative and that relative around and about Texas and they never felt wanted or loved, which was probably why Mary Kathleen’s brother became an alcoholic and died too young. Loneliness and aloneness can bring you down until you can hardly get up, as some of us know.
But Mary Kathleen had the courage of a Texas steel magnolia and classic Southern manners and she kept a smile on her face. She didn’t like to talk about what had happened to her. Stiff upper lip, don’t complain about your problems, no whining, count your blessings, that sort of thing…
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