Winnie Lee

Her name was Winnie Lee--Winnie Lee Corley--5 feet (or a little less) of quiet strength. She wasn’t impressive at first meeting—or even second. It wasn’t her style. She was simply who she was. Just plain folk. But she was a survivor, and she had survived much. She knew her way around conflict. She was, in her own quiet way, a force to be reckoned with. She was my grandmother—my father’s mother.
She lived all of her life in Greensboro, North Carolina and Danville, Virginia. She supported herself any way she could—partly by working long shifts in textile mills, and partly through schemes and negotiations that probably crossed legal and ethical lines. Whether what she did was right or wrong, her motive was survival--for herself and her 6 children.

I didn’t know her very well until she came to visit us in the summer of 1960. We, my mother and I, and then later my father, had been visiting my mother’s family in New York. On our way home to California, we zipped through North Carolina and swooped up Grandma. We zipped and swooped because my mother, who no matter where she lived, always remained a New Yorker, could not bear to spend any more time than necessary south of the Holland Tunnel. New Jersey was as close to Dixie as my mother ever cared to venture. We had visited my father’s family only once before we moved to California. But now Grandma was coming with us for a long visit, so we zipped into North Carolina long enough to swoop her up and start west.

It would be a long trip—and not just because it was 3000 miles traveled before the construction of the great interstate highways. Anyone who can sing, “Get Your Kicks on Route 66,” and sound sincere, never made the trip in August without air conditioning. No, it was long because I was an 11 year old girl traveling with three adults who, it seemed to me, didn’t know each other well—and didn’t enjoy each other much. In the front seat of Isabella (our blue and white,’58 Chevy Biscayne) rode my mom and my dad. Grandma Winnie Lee and I shared the back seat.

Did I say that it was just Grandma and I in the back seat? Actually, there was something else that made the trip even longer, and more unpleasant. Winnie Lee dipped snuff. She was a good North Carolinian, and she supported the tobacco industry –just not by smoking. Grandma always had a pinch of chew tucked delicately between her lips and gums. Of course, dipping snuff is a juicy proposition, so she always carried with her an empty coffee can to spit in. The coffee can rode menacingly on the floor between us. It sat there on the raised hump that housed the drive shaft of the car. I watched that can—carefully—very carefully for 3000 long, hot miles. I watched it—never taking my eyes off of it, and yet desperately trying to avoid seeing what was inside. I held my breath, for many reasons, as we twisted and turned our way through the Smokies, and later the Cascades. And I was so grateful for the long straight boring roads of Oklahoma, Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona.

But the thing that made the trip worthwhile was watching the fascinating dynamic between my Grandmother and my mother. They behaved well, but they really didn’t like each another. My mother was easy for me to read, and in the beginning I was uncomfortable and a little embarrassed at how evidently irritated my mother was at almost everything Winnie Lee said and did. At first I thought—well, I hoped-- that Grandma didn’t notice. But little by little I began to see that Winnie Lee could give as good as she got—she just had a different style. My dad drove the whole way in silence-- quieter than usual—and that was pretty quiet. He discovered early on that anything he said could be interpreted as taking sides in the cold war between his wife and his mother, and silence was his only defense. I was pretty quiet myself as I watched the unfolding drama. By Albuquerque I had started to figure out the characters, and the relationships. I thought to myself, “This might not be such a bad visit after all!”

One of the first battles in our own version of the “War Between the States,” took place in our kitchen. Two women, one kitchen. Two styles of cooking, one family to cook for. My father and I couldn’t eat enough to keep up, as each woman produced one specialty after another. One set before us an eclectic assortment of German cooking in a California context. The other offered Southern dishes—authentic “down home” meals. In the battle of the kitchen, my mother lost. It wasn’t her entirely her fault. She was an excellent cook. But her cooking was normal fare for us. Grandma’s was “home cooking” for my dad, and “something new and different” for me. Also, Grandma’s strategy consisted of shameless family pleasing. She prepared things that she knew we wanted to eat. My mom cooked to please herself—and it was always good, but not always our first choice. Eventually Mom surrendered the kitchen almost entirely, and Grandma took over. I learned to love buttered grits, greens with fat back, fried chicken, chicken fried steak, Irish potatoes, and sweet potato pie. I started the summer a tall skinny girl, and in a few months, I had womanly curves. Part of that was the normal course of nature, and part was Grandma’s cooking.

Grandma wasn’t content with winning the kitchen. The struggle continued.
My mother always sat in a particular chair at the dining room table, drinking tea, leaning forward on her left elbow, and holding a cigarette in her right hand. I knew that this posture meant, “Leave me alone.” But Grandma either didn’t know, or didn’t care what my mother wanted. For me, the fun started when Grandma came into the room holding the paper.

Now you wouldn’t think that reading a newspaper could be a source of conflict—but you never heard Winnie Lee read a newspaper. Grandma loved the newspaper—but not necessarily because it provided facts and information. For Grandma, the newspaper was simply inspiration for her detective skills. The headlines—even the first paragraph of an article—gave her the opportunity to tap into her experience of life and her knowledge of the human condition. I found this charming, funny, and fascinating. My mother found it infuriating.

As soon as Grandma appeared with the paper, my Mom would lower her head, and more vigorously than needed, tap ashes off the end of her cigarette. Grandma would plop down right across from her, spread the newspaper flat, and look over it until something would catch her interest.

Grandma might see a headline, “Car Crashes into Telephone Pole.” She would say out loud, in her slow southern drawl, “Dot.” Now I should say that my mother’s name was Dorothy. Dot was a common nickname for Dorothy, but one that my mother hated. Grandma even knew that, so when she called my mom, “Dot,” it had significance. And when Winnie Lee said, “Dot,” it was long, and slow, and it had more than one syllable. It started low, and ended high, as though it were a one word question. “D-aw-t?”
She’d make her advance—come right into my mother’s main sanctuary, and Grandma would start in. “Dot,” she would say. And we were off! She would wait for my mother to respond, “Yes-s-s…Mom.”

Then Grandma would slowly say, “It says here that a car crashed into a telephone pole.” She would wait for a response—insist on a response before she would go on. “Yes-s-s,” my mother’s blood pressure would begin to rise. You could see it in her face. Now it was Grandma’s move.

“Yep, it says here there was a crash out to Jurupa Road.”

“Really, Mom? A crash ON Jurupa Road?

“Yep, out to Jurupa Road. The driver was not hurt bad-- but his car were.”
“The crash was ON Jurupa road, Mom, and his car WAS damaged?” my mother would answer—openly annoyed. Grandma would look at mom; hold her with a look for a moment. She absorbed the criticism, but didn’t react to it. It was awesome to see. Then she would continue.

“Dot, that man had been drinking. He should not have been driving that car at all.” She would get caught up in her own story, then. Pointing to the paper without looking at it, she picked up the pace—a faster, more intense southern drawl, reporting it as though she had been an eye witness, and the driver had been a relative.

“But he was driving, Dot, and it was dark, and he just lost control.”

At this point, my mother would interrupt, and say with her own intensity, “Does it say that, Mom? Does it actually say the man was drinking?”

Grandma, who had been well on her way to creating a great southern novel, stopped and looked again at my irritated mother. You could count the beats of silence. Eventually, she would reply, as if to a young child, “Well, Dot---- he must have been drinking. Why else would the car have crashed?”

As though watching Wimbledon in slow motion, I looked toward my mother for her return. She took the last long drag from her cigarette, blew the smoke out slowly above our heads, and then firmly snuffed it out in the ashtray. This round went to Grandma—again.

As the weeks of the visit unfolded, my mom tried many counter defense measures, but found only one strategy that worked for her. When she saw Grandma coming with the paper, she would quickly rise, go into the bathroom, and close the door. But I was still frequently amused and delighted to see Grandma standing in the hallway outside the bathroom holding a newspaper, and “reading” to my mother through the door-- one story after another.

When Grandma told us how much she loved to fish, my mother, who did not pray, fervently said, “Thank God!”

Inland Southern California doesn’t have many natural lakes or streams. The river in Riverside, where we lived, had been dry for decades. But my mother was highly motivated, and she located a commercial fishing pond about 30 minutes from our house. She encouraged Grandma to go there to fish—and to fish often. She joyfully, and frequently drove Grandma and me to the pond, left us for several hours, and picked us up at an appointed time. My instructions were to stay with Grandma and take care of her. I was happy to do it.

Winnie Lee was a miraculous fisherwoman. Sure, it was an artificial lake stocked with fish, but there were lots of people there, and none of them could catch fish like my Grandma. Like everyone else, she put her bait on the line, and her line into the water. The difference was that the fish seemed to swim right to her hook and wait in line to bite. After an hour she would have caught her limit. After that, she would tell me stories, and ask me questions until mom picked us up.
But the word of Grandma’s talent spread, and the other fisherman would come with admiration and envy, and ask for tips and advice. Over time she became a local celebrity at the lake. I still don’t know what her secret was. She was quiet, and she was very still—but she had no fancy equipment, and we bought the bait at the Lake’s bait shop. Except for one time.

One day, before we went to the fishing lake, Grandma went to my mom, who was of course, at the dining room table and said, “Dot…Carry me down to the Post Office.”
Mom looked weary and already defeated. “Why do you need to go to the Post Office?”
“Dot, carry me down to the Post Office so I can get me some bait?”
My mother was rising to the conflict. “You want to try to buy bait at the Post Office?!”

“Do-o-t,” Grandma explained, “if you will carry me to the Post Office, I will get me some bait.”

“Bait! For God’s sake, Mom, they don’t sell bait at the Post Office!”

Grandma was patient, firm, relentless, “Dot, will you carry me to Post Office?”

“All right!” Jaw clenched, movements overly controlled, but made with determination, my mother crushed her cigarette in the ashtray, and ordered me, “Get my purse-- and my keys, we are going to the POST OFFICE.”

Mom stormed out to the car, got in, and slammed the door. She planted her hands on the wheel, gripped it hard, and stared out the front window. I came quickly behind her with the purse and keys, and got into the back seat. She took the keys, jammed them into the ignition and started the engine. Then we waited—again you could count the beats—or was that really my mother’s blood pounding in her neck. Soon, but not that soon, the passenger door opened, and Grandma got in with her pole, her fishing hat, her small tackle box, and of course, her coffee can.

No one spoke as my mother backed the car down the driveway. No one spoke as we drove to the Post Office. When we arrived, no one spoke as Grandma quietly got out and went in. My mother lit a cigarette and waited for the vindication she believed was on its way.

Then the door to the Post Office opened and out came Grandma. She walked toward us, eyes downward, carrying a small white carton---of bait. Sitting in the back seat I could see my mother’s eyes in the rear view mirror. Those eyes met mine. “Don’t say a word!” they threatened.

Grandma got in with her bait. My mother tossed the cigarette out the window, and in silence started the car. No one spoke as we drove to the Lake. “Get out!” mom said when we got there. It was said to me, but I suspected the message was also intended for Grandma. “I’ll be back at 5 to pick you up.”

As Grandma and I walked to the entrance I looked at her face. She looked back at me with those twinkly blue eyes, and the most delicious little smile.
I thought my mother was the most powerful woman in the world, but she had met her match in Winnie Lee. Grandma’s visit had taken her to the brink of nervous breakdown.

Once, my mother was trying to make her famous Kidney Bean Salad—quickly while my Grandma was out of the kitchen. As she was opening a can of kidney beans, it slipped and bounced off the counter spilling beans and liquid down the cabinets and out onto the floor. I watched in wise silence as my mother stood there looking at the mess. After a moment, mom bent down, picked up the can, and seeing that there were a few beans left, she extended her arm and dramatically shook the last beans and the last drops of liquid onto the floor.

Just at that moment, my Grandmother came around the corner into the kitchen. She saw what seemed to be my mother pouring kidney beans on the kitchen floor.
“Dot, what you are doing?” she asked.

Before my grandmother’s visit, my mother would have had a lot to say in answer to a question like that—none of it printable. But now, my mother just dropped the can, looked at Grandma for a moment, and then walked out of the kitchen leaving the whole mess behind her. I was torn between laughing, and pitying my poor mother.

Eventually the time came for Grandma to go back to North Carolina. We took her to the Greyhound station and watched as she got on the bus that would take her home. I know that my mother was relieved the visit was over.

Now things would go back to normal, but for me that meant coming home to an empty house, talking primarily to my dogs, and playing the piano.

As the bus pulled away Grandma waved good-bye to me through the window, and I already missed her.

The Piano

I remember when the piano came to live in our house. It was an old, dark brown upright. It had history, and it had character. From the moment that it was given a place of its own in our living room, I was drawn to it and to that place in our house. To some a piano is just a piece of furniture. To others a piano is merely a musical instrument—something connected to a hobby. Others have pianos because of the memories that represent—people or times that are in the past. To me, even though I was only 9, I knew the piano was going to be so much more to me. I was right. That piano, and one other since, became my lifeline- at different times, my therapist, my sibling, and my medium of prayer.
Of course, the piano didn’t come into my life through my efforts, nor was it brought into our house for me. My mother needed the piano. She bought it for herself, for a particular purpose.

My mother could not play the piano, but she needed to learn how. She was an amazing singer. When she was a little girl she won prizes in the Ted Mack Amateur Hour. She was proclaimed a “little Kate Smith”—a title she hated, but one that was meant as praise. She was a member of the New York all-city high school choir under the direction of Leopold Stokowski. And during WWII she was a Navy WAVE, the girl singer in uniform performing with combos of sailor musicians at Bond shows. After our difficult move from New York to California—a move created by my father’s medical discharge from the Navy with instructions to live in a warm climate—my mother found herself in a strange place, away from roots, from family and friends, with an alcoholic husband who she didn’t really know, and a young daughter she was ill equipped to raise.

Her solution to her unhappiness and her financial insecurity was to go to college. California in the late ‘50’s was experiencing an extraordinary population boom, which created a teacher shortage. The state offered to subsidize the college education of anyone willing to become a teacher. My mother did not want to become a teacher—she often said she didn’t like children. But she wanted that college degree, she wanted that experience, and this was a way to make it happen. She enrolled in the local community college, and in light of her vocal abilities, she became a music major. One of the classes she was required to take was piano. She bought the used upright piano so that she could practice—and it came to live in our house.

I was fascinated by this piano. In the many hours that I was alone in the house, I would sit on the squeaky bench, reaching my feet down to try to reach the two pedals that worked, and the one that didn’t. I would place my fingers on the yellowed ivory keys—keys that were cracked and chipped. I would pretend to play songs. If my mother was home, I did this silently, because the piano was off-limits for me. I was not allowed to play it. But when I was alone in the house, which was frequently, I pushed the keys, high and low, loudly and softly. I explored the range of sounds it could make, and like Snoopy pretending to be “the Ace pilot” I pretended, too. Here’s the famous concert pianist performing before thousands of adoring fans.

After a couple of weeks, I began to ask my mother for lessons. I wanted to be able to play; the pretending was not enough. She turned me down definitively.

“Why can’t I have lessons,” I would ask.

“Because I don’t have the money to pay someone to teach you,” she would tell me.

“Then could you teach me? You are learning how at college. Teach me what you know, please!”

“Absolutely not,” she would say, “Why? Because you won’t practice, and then we would fight. It would be a waste of my time, and make a bigger problem for me. Besides, I really don’t want to hear the noise of you practicing. I have too much going on.”

It wasn’t the answer I wanted to hear, but it was a clear answer. My mother was not the kind of parent to say one thing and mean another, so I now had to decide what to do.
The next time I was alone, I not only played the keys, but I opened my mother’s piano book. It was the John Thompson Adult Method—Book I. I started on the first lesson, and to my surprise, it made sense to me. If I read everything carefully I found I was able to learn the lessons. First one, then the next. As the lessons got more complicated, I paid more attention to my mother as she was practicing. If I heard her play one of the little pieces, I could work on it when she wasn’t home.
She had no idea what I was doing—but I was doing so well. There came a time—months later, when I was more than halfway through the book, and I wanted her to hear what I had accomplished. I was also feeling increasingly guilty that I was being disobedient about playing the piano. Since I had stopped asking for lessons, and since she never saw me even sitting at the piano, she had no indication that I was learning to play. Once she even said to me, “I notice that you aren’t interested in the piano anymore. I’m so glad we didn’t start lessons, aren’t you?” It hurt me to be deceptive, but I wasn’t sure what she would think if she knew I had been playing the piano behind her back.

I decided that I would play for her. I had been working very hard on “Spinning Song.” It was difficult for me. I had now gone ahead of her in the book, so I had to learn this piece entirely from the written music and instructions. But I finally could do it.
I waited until she announced that she was going to take a bubble bath. I listened for the tub to fill, for her to turn off the water, and I listened for the sound of her stepping into the tub and lowering herself down into the suds. I had used this strategy before. If I had something risky to communicate to my mother, I had learned that waiting to tell her until she was in the tub increased the odds of a good outcome for me. After all, if she was in the tub, she was naked, soapy and wet, and it would take her a few beats to get up, get out, get a towel, and get to me. It hadn’t prevented consequences, but it had minimized them. At least that was my belief.

So I waited for the moment, and finally it came. Giving her a few minutes to settle into the warm water, I said from outside the door. “Mommy, listen to this.” I went quickly to the piano and began playing. I played the whole piece, expecting at any moment she might appear, furious and slam the cover down. But she didn’t. I came to the end of the piece—a long broken chord played by the left hand. And then silence. I sat there on the bench waiting for a response. Silence. No praise, but no anger. No delight, but no fury. No news can be adequate news.

I took it as tacit approval. I continued to play when I was alone, and being a foolhardy (or maybe courageous) child, I tentatively began to play when she was home, but not in the bathtub. I didn’t push my luck by asking questions or practicing pieces that were still in process. But I would play things that I could play—right out in the open.
I went on to become a church musician. My first job at Grace Lutheran was when I was only 13 years old. In college, I chose music for my major. I have degrees and credentials in music and music education.

But my mother and I didn’t talk about that day until I was 35. It took 25 years for us to have the conversation. I asked her one day, “Do you remember that day when I played ‘Spinning Song’ for you while you were in the bathtub?”
“Oh yes,” she said, “It was a day that changed everything. What you didn’t know was that I had been struggling with my music classes. I was doing fine with everything else, but I was getting D’s in harmony and music theory, and I was failing piano. I had been trying to figure out what to do, when all of a sudden you—you #$% kid, played the song that I hadn’t been able to play. You had done it all by yourself, and I hadn’t been able to do it at all. I sat in the water and cried. The next day, I went to the registrar, dropped all my music classes and changed my major to English.”

That was all she said about it, and I let the subject go for another time. That time never came. If it were possible, I would ask her more about that day. There was more I would like to have heard, but at least I had the end of the story. My mother became a wonderful high school English teacher.

And I made my living in music. I still do. Piano has been the constant for me. Although I am not a concert pianist, playing the piano has been an anchor in my life. It has been there when people have not, and when life took terrible turns. It has been and still is for me, company, celebration, grief management, and prayer. In an odd way, it reminds me of my mother.

I will always be grateful for the day that the piano came to live in our house.