the matriarch of turkey creek
by kathy robinson

Aunt Beulah’s been dead for almost five years now, but she’s a constant presence in my heart. Her life was filled with examples of acceptance and survival. She lived most of her life on a farm at the base of a spectacularly beautiful mountain on South Turkey Creek in Leicester. My earliest memories of her and Uncle Bill are not memories at all, but moments captured by my Dad’s brownie camera, with stories related to me by my parents. The first time I climbed steps was at her house. I am beaming, in black and white, at the top of her farmhouse steps wearing overalls and a silly looking hat. My love for Tinker, her dog; I sit hugging him in her yard with Aunt Beulah and Uncle Bill squatted down beside me. Though this picture of us is embedded in my brain, I don’t actually remember Tinker at all. He was killed by a rattlesnake before I grew old enough to hold on to my memories.

Aunt Beulah’s childhood was difficult. All the children were required to do hard physical labor on the farm. She was the oldest and since the kids kept coming every year or two she was acting like a mama by the age of ten. A beloved brother Carl died in childhood. She developed pneumonia twice in high school, no antibiotics; she suffered but lived on. She married Uncle Bill at seventeen and moved from Green Valley to Turkey Creek. Two tubal pregnancies followed and resulted in sterility. A big mistake on God’s part if you ask me. But she survived and took care of us all—her sibs, her sibs' kids, and their kids, and their kids.

She loved us fiercely and without question. Once one of my cousins committed some crime or other and the police were looking for him. She hid him, fed him, put him to bed with a feather tick and quilts made by her hand. The family was scandalized, threatened her with jail, insisted that she kick him out. She told them to mind their own business. Hung up on them when they called to give their judgements. When things cooled down, she sent him home, probably kicking his butt on the way out the door.

When Uncle Bill died at fifty, she had never driven a car, written a check, or held a public job. She learned. I was a teenager then and felt by the family to be an excellent driver. Good enough to teach Aunt Beulah, and they believed, just crazy enough to want to try. She learned slowly, but never injured or killed anyone in the process. The hardest thing for her was realizing that when you turned a curve, you had to turn the steering wheel back to straighten it out afterwards. We landed in a few ditches due to that little misunderstanding. But some farmer, gentle and grinning, always showed up to pull us out with his tractor. She knew them all and had probably taken care of their children. She never really felt comfortable enough to drive into the booming metropolis of Asheville, but she tore up the roadways in Leicester, delivering food and caring for the sick.

She always had amazing energy. She worked the farm, cooked, canned, cleaned. Whenever anyone in the family or church got sick she was there to cook or clean for them too. I have vivid memories of her chasing escaped cows with a stick when she was in her eighties. I was in my forties and could barely keep up with her. When she fell off the loading dock at the Feed and Seed and broke her hip and wrist it slowed her down for a while, but not much and not for long.

When my mother died, her little sister, her house was the only place where I could feel some relief from the loss. Her house had a calming fragrance that enveloped you the minute you opened the door. In her home the hundred-year old house smells mixed with wood smoke, baking biscuits and fried meat, bathing you in comfort and love. In my grief I found solace in the smells, her cooking, her presence and her simple prayers. Though we knew my mom was sick, we were both shocked. Mostly we sat together silently, just glad to be in each others’ presence.

Four months after my mom died, I got a call in the middle of the night, they’d taken Aunt Beulah to the hospital with abdominal pain. She’d been at a cousin’s baby shower the day before laughing and eating cake. She slipped into a coma and died while I held her hand and prayed for a miracle. My years of training in medical school and residency were useless to her. My prayers were answered in a way—while her body left, she has stayed with me, a constant reminder that love and acceptance are possible.
Kathy Robinson was born in Asheville and celebrated her 50th birthday here last November. She is a family doctor, writer, stained glass and recycled materials artist, sings alto with Womansong and loves to dance.