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can appear almost haughty, and one glance can freeze its target. But upon closer examination, I have come to recognize that much of her moderation and even her severity can be attributed to shyness and modesty. Despite the fact that she is afarmworker and the mother of thirteen children, she is never less than dignified. Her erect posture suggests the propriety of an Edwardian lady. Those were the days in which she and her friends came of age. Those are the ways her behavior reflects. And she taught her children to carry themselves in that same way despite the differences in the times of our upbringing.
    My mother was at her best during our Sunday morning routine preparing for church. “Finish eating your breakfast and wash the dishes, so that we can get to Sunday school on time.” A few minutes later she would call again to her children from her bedroom, “Are you all ready for church?”
    “Yes,” we’d groan in response, anticipating the next command.
    “Well, sit on the couch and don’t move until I tell you,” the command always came back. “And don’t get your socks dirty.”
    My mother often expected from us what we considered to be the impossible, especially on Sunday mornings. But we dutifully complied. Even in the summer, when we walked the three miles along the dusty road between our home and the church, we arrived with our white anklet socks spotless and only a hint of dust on our patent-leather shoes. My mother’s church friend often served as her reinforcement. A woman nearly six feet tall and over 190 pounds in her prime, Mattie Hutton was her closest friend. We called her Miss Mattie. One Sunday morning when I was about twelve years old, she presented me with a purse. “Never let me see you at church without one again,” she warned to remind me that I had come of age. As my Sunday school teacher, Miss Mattie watched my progress in this respect. She hovered over us like her own. From the time she and my mother taught us the children’s “Jesus Loves Me” until we learned the more complex spiritual “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” (a song mourning a mother’s death), they reminded us that we were first the children of God and only after that theirs.
    Miss Mattie no doubt reasoned that if I were carrying a purse, I wouldn’t be able to play tag with the boys between Sunday school and church as I liked to. Well, I carried the purse, but I certainly continued to play chase. Years later, in deciding on a gift for me, she would choosea handmade apron. I treasure the gift but I do not wear it, preferring to wear the evidence of my cooking on my clothes.
    Another of my mother’s friends, Bertha “Red” Reagor, Miss Red, tried to make a similar impression on my role identification. Miss Red gave me a sewing basket for my birthday one year, and a miniature butter churn the year after. “I just thought this was the cutest thing for Faye” (everyone referred to me by my middle name). She laughed nearly each word, as was her customary way of talking. When I went away to college, my mother confiscated the sewing basket rather than let it go to waste. The butter churn I keep as a memento, knowing that butter will never be formed in it. Most of the gifts my mother’s friends gave to help ground me in what they considered my proper role and carriage, I still have. They serve as tangible reminders of the intangible gifts—the poise, the self-respect, the discipline—that were of far greater value.
    But if she was the person who kept us in line, my mother was also an unselfish nurturer. My most distinct early memory of her is of her feet as they moved up and down with the treadle of the sewing machine that she had inherited from her mother. My mother sewed all of her daughters’ clothes until one by one they learned to sew for themselves. I would have my turn sewing soon enough, but then I was no more than four or five years old and too young for most household duties. During her sewing we would play a