By Randy Reynolds
It wasn't her birthday or mine. It was no special night. But something triggered memories that night and I am a memory-writer with a frequent urge to document what I feel during my journey on this planet and I was 45 already, running out of time, I thought. And Violet —Sheesh!—she was already 61!!! I HAD to tell her right then, that night, October 28, 1993, what I remembered about her because it would be a shame if something happened to me tomorrow and she never got to know!
The letter I wrote that night came back to me in a box of Violet's things, my one-sixth share of her photos and keepsakes distributed by my sisters after Violet died, twenty years ago today (May 13, 2022.) Here's what I told her in that letter, written 9 years before she died:
Dear Mom,
It occurs to me that you probably don't know the things I remember best about you from the time I was an only child till now:
,,,I've always thought that no one could have such a pure, sweet singing voice as yours. This has always made me wonder whether I was adopted because surely anyone who carries a tune as badly as I do could NOT be the son of someone who sings like you!
When I was 4, I remember sitting with you on a piano bench in our empty church in Adel, Georgia, in the middle of a steaming hot day. You were picking out some notes, teaching yourself to play. You told me I could sit there if I wouldn't touch the keys. You'd play a few chords and sing a little. And I was the only one on the bench with you. You sang so beautifully it gave me chill bumps. (I thought you were a genius to teach your own self to play.) I seem to remember that Ricky and Ronda (still toddlers compared to me) were playing airplane or something in the aisle. I'm not sure. I mainly remember a black piano up against the right-hand wall beside the pulpit. And I was the only one on the piano bench with you so, thinking as 4-year-olds do, I felt satisfied that you were just MY mother for that little while...not theirs.
I thought you were very talented back then, when I had no one to compare you to. But later, when I heard how others sang, I realized you actually WERE the best. You just stood out. And every time I heard you sing in the churches at Bainbridge or Shepherd's Fold or Alabama City or wherever, it made me think of the private concerts you gave—the ones I pretended were just for me— in the empty church in Adel.
Do you know the one word that always makes me think of you? "Jackpot." That word brings back memories from when I was 5 and we lived in Shannon, Georgia. You listened to the radio as you did your housework and there was a "jackpot song" on your favorite station every day. If no one guessed the title of the song, the announcer would add another dollar to the jackpot for the next day. I remember the radio was on a tiny table in the kitchen and you'd make us all hush up when it was time for the jackpot song. You'd get real close to the radio, often leaning on your broom or mop and you'd turn up the radio for the jackpot song. You always guessed the song, but I don't remember you calling in. I just remember you explaining to me what a jackpot was and I was totally awed that someone gave away dollars on the radio and also that you always got the songs right.
I remember 1957 when we lived in Cooper Heights, Georgia, the way you sang Que Sera Sera. You sang along with Doris Day but she couldn't hold a candle to you. It's very rare that I hear that kind of music anymore, but every time I do, I think of young Violet, with outstretched arms, singing Que Sera Sera to an imaginary audience in our tiny living room in Cooper Heights.
I don't know if anyone in your life ever told you this, but you were prettier than any movie star. Maybe you'd have been one if you hadn't met Gene Reynolds and become a preacher's wife in a religion that taught that going to the movies was a sin. But then I wouldn't have been your son. Someone else would. Ha.
I sometimes think of your training when you were a little girl —your Daddy preaching on those street corners in Gainesville, Georgia, in the late 1930s and early '40s when you were a little girl and standing you up on a chair, a box or a car's hood and making you sing. If that was hard for you to do, at least you mastered your feelings and performed like a trouper! I think that made you tougher than most people. Tough enough to wrangle 6 children 24 hours a day by the age of 27!
I hate to tell you this, but as the family disciplinarian you weren't so tough. You'd fuss like a mad hen and try to hide your grin. And every time your threat started with the word "Buster..." we knew it didn't mean anything.
The most I ever heard you laugh was in your late 20's, in the fall of 1960 on Sunday nights after church when Fred and Irma Jenkins came over to the old Shepherd's Fold parsonage (the one that burned down after Labor Day) and y'all sent both sets of kids to the back room to watch TV and y'all grownups played that board game WAHOO! in the dining room. I never heard such laughter from you, (and Dad, too,) before or since.
The most I ever heard you cry was when your mom and Donnie got in that wreck in Tifton when you were about 29 and I had just become a teenager. You cried all the way from Louisiana to Georgia that night, because you thought you might not see them alive again. I crouched down, fearfully, in the back floorboard of that green and yellow Chevy Biscayne behind Daddy. Ricky was on the floorboard behind you. Ronda and Ramonda were asleep on the back seat. I remember that Renda was in the back window. Little Renee was in the front seat with y'all.
It was touch and go, as the doctors' said, but your mom and brother survived, of course. Their close call and your sadness over it awakened in me the question of how I would feel if MY mother was that close to death.
But mostly when I think about you, I think of your singing—singing to me on that piano bench in the empty church in Adel while Doris Day and Patti Page were getting all the songs that should have been yours.
Love,
Randy
