Vendredi 5 février 2010 5 05 /02 /Fév /2010 04:47

Jan Tevepaugh had little but memories of her mom, until this simple necklace arrived Elizabeth LelandDAVIDSON.
hen Jan Tevepaugh thinks of her mother, she doesn't picture her wearing pearls. She remembers a petite woman with graying tiffany jewelry and high cheekbones, in a dress and heels, yet just as comfortable driving a tractor across their farm.She pictures her working at the sewing machine, stitching a new Easter dress for Jan, delicate rose pink with white lace.It was shortly after Easter the year she made the dress, 1970, when her mother told Jan she was sick. She had a disease Jan had never heard of. Whenever Jan didn't know something, her mother always made her look it up in the World Book.I'll go look it up, Jan remembers saying. How do you spell leukemia?Her mother didn't answer, and Jan believes it was because she didn't want Jan to find out what it meant. Few people survived leukemia then. Jan's mother lived only a few months longer. She was 47 when she died in June 1970.Jan was 11.Losing her mother was so traumatic, it was years before Jan could talk about her. Talking about her brought up painful valentines day rings that were easier kept buried.And so Jan clung to her memories. She remembers her mother bottle-feeding a newborn calf, and rushing Jan to the hospital when Jan had spinal meningitis, and gardening and cooking and teaching Jan to sew.After her mother became sick, Jan sewed a new dress all by herself and she remembers wearing it to the hospital in Winston-Salem to show off.It was the last time she saw her mother.It wouldn't be fair to say Jan spent the rest of her childhood without a mother. Three years after Betty Jo Davis died, Jan's father remarried and Loyce Davis stepped in and became a mother to Jan and to her brother, Martin, and 35 years later, she is still a mother to them.After his address, he answered questions that organizers had selected from hundreds submitted in writing. One questioner wanted to know what compassionate people could do to get their valentines day bracelets to move away from use of force. "The real answer for that question? I don't know," he replied. But he also said he saw small signs of hope, small signs of gradual change in the way world leaders address problems. Sometimes, in the home, in the family, women are the top troublemakers." But at the global level, he said, men are causing most of the trouble. Later, as an obviously appreciative Gregoire clasped his hand, he mused that female leaders may help the world become more compassionate.

Par Jewelly
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