Not Ordinary

There are no “ordinary” people.

C. S. Lewis

Last winter I was shopping for my rock-collecting daughter.  While admiring a  gorgeous geode, the merchant told me the story about where it was found:

At an excavation site, mounds of gray rocks were unearthed. The heap of rubble was bulldozed into oblivion.   No one questioned if the stones had any value. But then one was crushed, revealing beautiful crystals inside. Though outwardly plain, the rocks held hidden treasures:  gems within geodes. What formed the crystals?  Heat and pressure.  What brought them to light?  Opening up.  

Shinichi Suzuki wrote in Nurtured by Love, “Anybody who takes up an art [or the quest for excellence] is apt to think of the object of his ambition as something very far off, . . . The real essence of art turned out to be not something high up and far off.  It was right inside my ordinary daily self.  . . . If a musician wants to become a fine artist, he must first become a finer person.  If he does this, his worth will appear . . . in everything he does.”

Sarah Frances Rucker Williams
(1849 - 1934)

“They don’t call her one-shot-Sarah for nothing,” Cyrus’ final comment hung in the air as he punctuated his statement with a warning look directed at his children. The offense they were to avoid on pain of punishment was the crime of laughing at their Great-Aunt Sarah.  

Upon entering Sarah's home, Cyrus would swoop to grab the newspaper and open it wide as the family settled in for their visit.  The trouble with Aunt Sarah wasn’t that she was boring but that one never knew what wildly random thing was going to pop out of her head. So the kids had to keep themselves braced to stifle any laughter she might elicit for their father feared she would take it for mocking.

It did not escape his daughter's notice that Cyrus chuckled freely, his face hidden behind the newspaper.

Sarah was a fascinating character--a legend in my family history.  She was my father's grandmother and had the reputation of possessing the "energy, ability and . . . determination to carry out any undertaking."

Sarah smoked a pipe with a curved stem, wore red flannel underwear and possessed a book on etiquette.  Her posterity speculate as to whether she ever opened it.  Or maybe she did the same as my older sisters who thumbed through the book and laughed at the Nineteenth Century sense of decorum. 

• She was known to announce in front of guests that the dinner glasses could be returned directly to the cupboard as "they had nothing but water in them."
• Once she walked up to a snarling bobcat armed only with a fence post.
• At age 78 she put the local ranchers to shame by saving their herds' hide and dispatching a troublesome coyote.  She succeeded where they failed by taking her time and watching the coyote's pattern for three nights before positioning herself where she was able to take care of business with a single shot. 

Crusty on the outside, strength and determination on the inside--my great-grandmother epitomizes the "Gem in the Geode."  It was said of her that she always did whatever needed to be done, no matter how difficult the task.