Laurel and Nevel and Owen

 TALKING TO MYSELF: 10 Dec, 2011 Today is our Sweet Owen's birthday, a date he shared with my Uncle Nevel, whom the family affectionately called "Bo." Uncle Bo died in August, 2008, from complications related to an auto accident, but was sharp of mind and wit until the end. I repeat the story I wrote for his 100th birthday celebration here today with birthday wishes to our grandson. 

Laurel and Nevel

         One hundred years ago come Sunday, my grandmother gave birth to a son in a drafty Owen County farmhouse on Brushy Creek.  It wasn’t exactly a manger in a stable scene, but there were similarities in the accommodations, and this Yuletide birthday story is dear to my family.

          Her healthy baby, my grandmother decided, was a Christmas gift from God.  And so she gave the child the grandest name she could think of -- Ruric Nevel -- after an educator from Eastern Kentucky State Normal School who had influenced her life.  My grandfather wasn’t crazy about the name Ruric, but decided he could live with calling the child Nevel, and so he let my grandmother have her way.  He was so taken with his strong, baby boy that he ventured into the kitchen for the first and possibly last time in his life to bake a holiday fruitcake in their wood burning cook stove.

          It was a curious time of joy and grief for my grandmother.  The Lord giveth, but she also knew he could taketh away. 

            When she was thirteen, her father had toppled over in a living room chair in front of her eyes.  The economic and emotional hardship that followed his death scarred my quiet, sensitive grandmother, and made her cautious.  An intelligent girl, she went to work teaching a one-room school when she was sixteen to help her mother support the family.  She taught for a good many years, and thought she might never marry.

           But then my tall, red-headed grandfather came courting, and the rest, as they say, is history.  She was twenty-four when they married in 1903, and he was twenty-five.  

          A year later she gave birth to a beautiful boy who looked just like his daddy.  They named him Laurel, and by all accounts, they were silly about him.   Laurel was just turning two in the spring of 1906 when my grandmother realized that she was pregnant again.  Life was good.

          But when August came and the summer sun blazed, my grandmother faltered.  She looked away.   She may have been sick with the pregnancy.  She may have been frying chicken or washing clothes.  It doesn’t matter.  The point is she looked away.  Just for moment.  Long enough for the two-year-old Laurel to stuff his mouth with mysterious berries. 

          The doctor didn’t think eating the berries caused Laurel’s dysentery, but my grandmother was sure it had.  When Laurel died of dehydration a week later, my grandmother blamed herself.  She had let their sweet boy die. 

          When my Uncle Nevel was born a few months later on December 10, the house was still haunted by sorrow.  Although the death of a child was more common in 1906 than it is today, my grandmother never forgave herself.  She would go on to raise seven children to adulthood, but she never forgot the pain of losing Laurel.  The nickels that held his eyes shut in death were among her most guarded possessions, and each Memorial Day, she smothered the boy’s small grave with irises and roses from their yard.

           I can imagine her vigilant eyes as Uncle Nevel began to crawl and then toddle.  I can feel her willing him to live as though she were giving him a magic elixir of vitamins and strength.  I can see his quick wit and amiable ways developing early as he tried to make his mother smile.  He had to live and thrive – because Laurel hadn’t. 

          Uncle Nevel was five years old before my grandmother, by then 32, had another child.  The reasons for this five year gap are unknown to me.  But I fancy she may have waited until she knew she could get one child to live.  Then, in a flurry – God might change his mind after all, and snatch Nevel away to Poplar Grove cemetery -- she had six more children.  The last one was born when she was forty-five.

           The younger children changed Nevel’s name to “Bo” – a toddler’s mangled attempt to say brother.  The name stuck within the family perhaps because Uncle Bo has indeed been a fine brother.  He’s been there in times of trouble providing leadership and encouragement.  He’s been there in the good times, too, making everyone laugh, organizing reunions, setting up the tables for yet another game of Rook.

            My Uncle Bo will celebrate his one hundredth birthday on Sunday.  He’s still flirting with pretty waitresses and cracking jokes.  He keeps up with politics and current events and gets out to church and Lodge doings on days when his knees aren’t hurting too bad. 

          He doesn’t have much advice, though, for those who seek his secret for longevity. In fact, he seems surprised that he’s the oldest person he knows.  He did marry three beautiful women – that may have made the years pass more quickly.  He’s always laughed a lot and had a good time.  And of course, he’s had meaningful work, an important balance in any life.  After he left his parents’ Owen County farm, he went to work for the Sterling Glass Company in Cincinnati, eventually becoming a partner.  He sold out in 1952, and founded an electrical contracting business.  When he finally retired, he engaged himself in civic affairs, such as Lions Club, and with politics.  He’s proud of having served on the Boone County Planning Commission for fifteen years during a period of unprecedented growth in Northern Kentucky.   Oh – and he liked to dance.  That may have helped, he says.

          But last Memorial Day, as I watched Uncle Bo place a flower, as he does every year, on his brother Laurel’s grave, I thought about my grandmother.  Maybe on that long ago December day, she asked God to forgive her for looking away for a just a moment.  Maybe she asked God to bless Bo with the years Laurel wouldn’t have. 

Copyright Georgia Green Stamper 

"Laurel and Nevel" was first published in The News-Herald in 2006. It is included in YOU CAN GO ANYWHERE from the crossroads of the world (Wind 2008). A second collection of my essays, working title "Butter in the Morning," will be published by Wind in 2012.