DON'T GO NEAR THE WATER 'TIL YOU LEARN HOW TO SWIM

     As the oldest grandchild of Enos and Emily Leigh, I suppose I have become the unofficial archivist of this branch of The Family.  The Leighs, like almost all Southern families, have always been story-tellers and as the oldest, I seemed to be the chosen recipient of many of these familial sagas.  Some of these stories have been told and retold and are well known family lore.  However, I suspect there are some incidents in the life of The Leigh Family that have never been heard by my generation, except by me.  Here follows such an account.

      This story was told to me by my Aunt Mary Leigh, the oldest child of the seven born to Enos and Emily.  This incident happened when the family consisted of just my grandparents, Mary, her sister Annie, and another sister, Hattie or Dolly.  It was a summer day in southern Mississippi. . .in fact, it was a summer Sunday.

     Early that day, The Leighs had dressed for church, hitched the horse to the two-seater wagon, and driven down the dusty, unpaved red clay road to the Baptist Church for services.  After a nice morning of singing, praying, hearing The Word, and spending some time with relatives and friends, Enos and Emily ushered The Family back to the wagon.  Enos had on his good suit, with cravat and stickpin.  Emily had on her Sunday finery with hat, as was de rigueur during that time period.  They sat on the front bench of the wagon.  Mary and Annie sat on the back bench.  Mary begged her mother that she be allowed to hold the baby, Dolly.  Emily gave in with all the cautions usually associated with the transfer of an infant to a child.

     They drove home in the heat of noon-day, probably with the chatter of the two older girls almost masking the sounds of the horse’s hoofs on the red clay road.  They were probably thinking about the fried chicken, corn bread, vegetables from the garden, and cold buttermilk they would have for Sunday Dinner. They came to the shallow stream that crossed the road, and Granddaddy slowed down as he had earlier that morning so that the water would not splash on their Sunday clothes.  The horse stepped into the water, probably happy to wet his hooves, and walked cautiously toward the road on the other side. 

     My Aunt Mary said that before anyone knew what was going on, my grandmother fell off the wagon seat into the water of the stream.  I report “fell,” but the actual words my aunt used were “flung herself off the wagon seat.”  Aunt Mary said she was never so afraid in her life.  However, she held on to Baby Dolly as she started screaming and crying that her mother was dead!

     My grandfather did not even get out of the wagon.  My grandmother stood up from the shallow water, probably squeezed out some of the water from her long dress, and I'm sure she didn't remove her hat as she never was outdoors without a hat.  She climbed back into the wagon, and my grandfather indicated for the horse to continue the journey.  Aunt Mary said as far as she remembered, no one said a word during the remainder of the trip home.  In fact, she said that she never asked her mother or father about the incident in the many years they were together as adults.  Of course, this seems inconceivable to me, but Mary was always the dutiful daughter who shared a birthday (December 6^th) with her mother and never questioned her.  My grandmother lived to be ninety-six and her oldest child, Mary, lived to be ninety-five.

     Mary told me that from the day of the water incident with her mother, she was always terrified of water and, therefore, never learned to swim and never went boating.  She must not have been that afraid of water as she used to take my brothers and me crabbing in the Gulf of Mexico when we were kids.  But on the other hand, we did stand and work on the broken concrete jetty while we gathered our crabs. . .

     Aunt Mary told me that she didn’t have an idea why my grandmother would “fling herself into the water” that day.  As a youngster I imagined that she and my grandfather were “having words,” and Mamo just ended the discussion by going into the brink.  Later, as I became a moody teen-ager, I thought maybe she had “a tantrum,” and just fell off.  However, as an adult I came to the conclusion that (A) she was playing a trick on those in the wagon [not funny, Mamo] or most probably (B) she was hot and needed to cool off.  I now vote for both reasons as I remember other things I was told over the years.

     My grandmother had a saying that used to convulse my brothers and me:  “Don’t go near the water ‘til you learn how to swim.”  Of course, this begs the question:  how can we learn to swim if we don’t go near the water?  She would laugh but repeated her mantra often.

     There were additional stunts I was told about by my mother and aunts, and I even witnessed one such incident myself.  For many years my grandparents and aunts lived in Gulfport, Mississippi, near the Gulf of Mexico.  My brothers and I used to visit them and later we too moved to Bay St. Louis and then Gulfport, Mississippi.  Often, we would go to the beach to play in the sand and the water. . .I guess that’s when we would hear the “Don’t go near the water. . .” from our grandmother.  However, sometimes she would take off her shoes and stockings and she would walk in the sand and sometimes to the water’s edge and wade in the Gulf water, no higher than her ankles.  She seemed to enjoy it, and once I saw her plop right down on the soft, mushy sand, right in the shallow water.  We all ran to her and she smiled with a twinkle in her eyes, exclaiming, “Oh, my goodness; look what I did! Well, since I’m already wet, I might as well stay here in the water.”  I couldn’t believe it.  My grandmother couldn’t swim, but she was “in the water.”  She never owned a bathing costume; she never wore slacks.  She was always in dresses and whenever she went outside, she always had on a hat of some kind.  [Now that I picture her in the water, I remember she was wearing a hat then too.]

     That’s why I have come to the conclusion of why my grandmother flung herself off the wagon.  She was hot and wanted to cool off, and I suspect she had done the same thing often as a girl in south Mississippi – too proper to actually own a swimming costume and too modest to swim in anything less.  And, she had a reputation as  a jokester as well.  Now, before you think that my grandmother’s theatrics permanently marked my Aunt Mary’s life as one who was relegated to live on terra firma, I need to relate one more conversation I had with Aunt Mary.

     Mary never did go swimming or boating in her entire life.  She never flew on an airplane.  Most of her siblings, as well as her nieces and nephews had been to Europe several times.  The farthest away she’d been was to Canada – on the train.  She always seemed to take the road “most traveled.”  For most of my life, I would have characterized her as one who didn’t take risks or who didn’t care whether she had an adventure or not.  So, you can imagine my shock of learning something about my aunt when, in 1984, New Orleans hosted a World’s Fair.  One of the featured attractions was a cable strung from one side of the Mississippi River to the other side where the main exhibits of the fair were.  And on this cable hung a gondola that was to carry passengers hundreds of feet above the Mississippi from one bank to the other.

     Now, I have ridden ski lifts, Funiculars, cable trams to the top of the Austrian and Swiss Alps, but I would not have ridden that Mississippi River Gondola for a million dollars a minute.  In fact, few people ended up doing so compared to the other attractions.  However, before the fair opened and while everyone was just reading about the different attractions, my Aunt Mary told me that she would like to volunteer to be the “first person to ride on the Gondola.”  WHAT?  I couldn’t believe it.  “Do you really mean that?”  My aunt answered, “I really mean it; I would love to be the first person to ride across the  river on that cable car.”  And she meant it.

     That admission showed me that I didn’t really know this mild-mannered, selfless, retired first grade teacher.  She had a streak of adventure and daring that even I didn’t have.  I wish that I could report that we made her dream come true, but she wouldn’t leave her home in Mississippi with her responsibilities of taking care of her loved ones.  But, as she pointed out, whenever she saw the Gondola going across the  Mississippi on television, she could imagine herself being up there and looking down on the water of the Great Mississippi River!  Water?  Now this was a statement from one who had had a so-called traumatic childhood event which kept her out of the water spots of the world for seven decades.  Perhaps, she had more of her mother (my grandmother) in her than we, The Family, had reckoned!!!