Small town Southern...woman?

If you haven't heard the Alan Jackson song "Small Town Southern Man" you're really missing out. I know many of you don't like country music. Hell, I don't really like it myself. But the song is just amazing, especially if you're southern but even if you're not. It got me thinking about my own upbringing, and though I can't really say that the song reminds me of my dad, it does in many ways remind me of my grandmother. Some of you knew my grandmother. Most of you didn't. Let me start out by saying that she could be (and often was) the most harsh and demanding woman you could ever meet. But she could also be the most gentle and loving person. One thing I can say for sure is that she always picked us up after we fell and dusted us off, even if she had a few choice comments to make. Most of you know that my grandmother passed away last semester after a long and arduous tenure in the nursing home. I've been thinking a lot about her ever since she died and how she impacted my life, and I realized that I am in many respects a product of her raising moreso than I am of my parents. I was typing an email to a friend earlier today and I started getting a little carried away and eventually deleted much of what I wrote, but I think this is an appropriate venue to share some of that. So here are my thoughts on me.

My grandmother raised me on cornbread and honey and taught me to treat other people how I wanted to be treated. She never let me slide - when I deserved to be disciplined she made me cut my own switch off of the tree outside. She demanded the utmost in behavior and respect. I said yes ma'am to her even though I seldom if ever addressed my own mother in this fashion. She raised me to work. She taught me that hard work will overcome any trial or tribulation. She didn't have much use for alcohol or cigarettes, which often became a source of tension among certain members of the family. Grandmother was the last of a generation forged by the fires of necessity and want and shaped by the hands of war. She knew what it meant to be without and never wanted her family to know the same. She taught us how to can and preserve and to save everything we could for later. Now I'm not going to gush about the greatest generation and how there will never be another generation with the strength of those who endured the second World War. I am however going to gush about what they taught us and how we aren't teaching our children what we learned from our parents and grandparents. I see that I am the last of a generation who cares more about others than they ever could about themselves. People younger than me only seem to care about themselves and what they can get. It seems that the values I grew up on are just not being taught any more. And it saddens me. And it's not because we don't know them anymore. It's not that we forgot. We just simply don't care anymore. Somehow we got it in our heads that we only get hurt when we care. And so we taught our kids not to care so they wouldn't get hurt. I think we need to look back to the values of my grandmother and learn something we forgot we knew from a small town southern woman named Elizabeth.