Rivers and Streams

Britta Seaton, née Slaughterback, was born in 1888.  She lived in a little house in Lawrenceville, Illinois with a Mynah bird that could talk.  A small man with an outsize temper, her husband was both an alcoholic and a member of the Ku Klux Klan.  Her life could not have been easy.

Rebecca Bell came from Wales at the turn of the last century, building a life in a new country and raising a pack of boys in the process, one of whom married Merle Ball of Brazil, Indiana, turning her, as she always liked to say, from a Ball to a Bell.

Merle’s father was a section boss on the Indiana railroad.  He had beautiful handwriting, and he drank too much.  She left home at fifteen, taking with her a strain of bitterness that would run through the rest of her life.  The anger in her voice was undiminished as she described, eighty years on, standing in the cold outside the local tavern, waiting for her father, as man after man stepped outside to relieve himself in the snow.  She outlived her husband, she outlived her children, and as things unraveled she lost much of herself.  But she never lost that memory.

Gladys Seaton, daughter of Britta, also fled a drunken father, only to flee again from the abusive uncle who had taken her in.  The eventual mother to six daughters, she ran a string of diners and coffee shops.  She smoked like a chimney and drank coffee in much the same manner.  Born in 1909, she wrote a letter to her children and grandchildren on the night of the first moon landing in which she marveled at all she had seen.  Outgoing and vivacious, she never let the truth get in the way of a good story.  And in the end, even death couldn’t stop her.  A great believer in the afterlife, for a year or so after her passing she would occasionally appear as a shadow, a scent, or a bit of mischief-making, whether checking on her grand-babies, or teasing and terrifying the daughters she had left behind.

One of whom was Barbara “Bobby” Stressman.  A beautiful, playful woman, she started dating my father when she was fifteen, lost him when she was thirty-eight, and was left to raise four children alone.  She remarried, taking in her mother-in-law, Merle Bell, as well as her second husband’s grandson.  Her children grown, she continues to care for others.  It seems to be her mission.  She told me once that as a very young girl she was taken by friends to a revival meeting downtown, where, with a certainty belying her age, she walked down the aisle and accepted Jesus as her savior.  I’d never heard  that story before, but when I see her now, volunteering at the hospital, or caring for a dying friend, I can’t help but see that same little girl, all by herself, taking the first steps on a journey that would last a lifetime.

From these women came my daughter, who tomorrow turns six.

They are, of course, but one tributary, for flowing north out of Oklahoma and Texas comes another just as beautiful, and certainly just as strong.  But this is the stream I know, for it also flows through me.  And on this day it is good to remember that despite all the obstacles that have stood in its way, it continues to rise anew, cold and clean, bubbling forth in the early morning light.

Tags: Ancestors, Children, Family, Fatherhood, Fathers and Daughters, Kids, Women