Victory or Death

April 23, 2012 By

There is a subdivision near my daughter’s school called ”Travis Country.”  We pass by the limestone sign every day, surrounded by verbenas and turk’s caps, shining brightly in the sun.

“Who’s Travis?” she asked one morning. “And why did they name this place after him?”  Despite my various inadequacies, I felt relatively comfortable explaining who this person was that so important to our state’s history.  After all – I was born and raised in Texas.  I grew up forty-five minutes from the Alamo. If anyone could tell her who Travis was, I could.  Here was my very helpful answer:

 

 I think he was a Colonel in the Republic who fought at the Alamo.  Did he wear a coonskin cap?  No, wait.  That was Davy Crocket.  Anywho, it was either he or some other dude that met with a Mexican leader under a tree regarding surrender.  No wait, that can’t be right.  Well I don’t know his first name, honey. But I think his middle name started with a B.

Yes, folks.  That’s it.  Colonel Travis wore a coonskin cap while not dying at one of the biggest battles in Texas history because he apparently morphed his ghost-like dead self into Sam Houston and was busy negotiating a surrender.  Most importantly, however, his middle name started with a B.  Of that, I’m certain.  Well thanks a lot, small-town history teacher.  Thanks a lot.

That night, I asked my husband to better explain it.  His first response was “please tell me you didn’t try.”  What?  Why would he jump to such accusatory conclusions?  I lied and said no, even though I’m very well-versed on the subject and all.  He snickered at that.  So at bedtime,  my husband allowed my daughter to stay up late in order to re-tell the story of William Barret Travis dying in a hard-fought battle against Mexican soldiers, leading a team of outnumbered and starving misfit settlers.  He dramatically drew his hand across the bedcovers to imitate how Lt. Col. Travis drew a line in the sand, urging those who wouldn’t fight-to-the-death to walk away.  No one walked.  They all crossed that line. My daughter sat up with rapt attention.  Please don’t mention the coonskin cap, I thought as I tried to beam it directly into my daughter’s head.  I’ll never live that one down.     

The way my husband wove the tale you’d think it was a work of fiction, with William Travis walking away from a sordid past in Tennessee to find his home in this rugged new place, leading a pack of dirty men, all huddled behind a Catholic mission’s dirt-and-mortar walls.  They all died bloody deaths in the battle of the Alamo, but the Mexican soldiers finally prevailed.  “A woman named Susana Dickenson survived to tell the tale,” my husband said with raised eyebrows.  My daughter breathed in fast. What did she do? Where did she run? Why did they let her go?  The stinging smell of independence hung like fog in the air around her pink covers.  The Battle of San Jacinto.   Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna.  The capture and surrender.  Gunsmoke.

I passed the sign again today and it had new significance.  It reminded me of why I live in the great state of Texas, tucked away in the hill country amidst bluebonnets and wild Indian blankets,  the soil fertilized with the blood of those who died for our right to stake a home onto this great land.  The tall, blowing grasses are moistened by their tears, and their yet untold lives whisper to me in the afternoon winds.  This state is special not just because of the stories told today, but of stories long since past.

On February 24, 1836, mere days before the end, Travis wrote to the people of Texas and all Americans in the world, saying “I am besieged, by a thousand or more of the Mexicans under Santa Anna. I have sustained continual bombardment and for twenty-four hours and have not lost a man. . . I have answered the demand with a cannon shot, and our flag still waves proudly from the walls. I shall never surrender or retreat. Then, I call on you in the name of liberty, of patriotism and everything dear to the American character, to come to our aid, with all dispatch. The enemy is receiving reinforcements daily and will no doubt increase to three or four thousand in four or five days. If this call is neglected, I am determined to sustain myself as long as possible and die like a soldier who never forgets what is due to his own honor and that of his country. Victory or death.”

Thank you, William Barret Travis.  For the fight.  For the intensity for which you loved this place.   For drawing that line in the sand.  I thank God for you, for what you did for us so many years ago, and for your unyielding urge to never give up even as solders were climbing the wall and closing in. I salute you, my dear patriot.  Even if it makes people look at me funny while I drive by that sign, in my sweats, possibly talking on my cell phone, on a Tuesday afternoon.

Others might have chosen to walk away – but you?  In that dark day in March, 1836, as you breathed your last breath, you thought not of these things. You thought of victory.

Filed Under: Inspirational, Love, Texas Tagged With: , , , , ,

the loom

September 22, 2011 By

I feel like a decent mother. After all, my daughter eats her spinach, draws excellent giraffes, makes up songs that rhyme, and announces randomly at dinner that, sadly, Pluto is no longer a planet.  We mothers pat ourselves on the back for being that rock in our children’s changing world.  The straight arrow in their quiver.  We, after all, are good mothers.  Smart mothers.  We know best.

A few years ago, at my daughter’s pre-school, I noticed that a little girl was munching on pizza rolls and trying desperately to pry apart a fruit rollup apart with her teeth.  My eyes darted to my own child’s lunch, which luckily contained cottage cheese and fruit. I grinned.  My child might thumb her nose up at olives, but at least she’s not eating that.  Forget the fact that pizza-roll kid will end up at a Virginia private school on a soccer scholarship, or become a world famous scientist, or perhaps save a species of fish from extinction.  My kid won’t fall asleep with orange Cheeto dust in her hair, and that’s really what matters.

Then there was the time the preschool teacher announced that my daughter was able to spell her own name before all the other children.  I made a quirky little face like “What?  We just sit around drinking sodas and drawing on the walls.  I just have no idea where she gets it from.” In reality, I was patting myself on the back for putting up a word tree in her bedroom and for reading her so many stories despite the fact I was so tired I wouldn’t have cared if Curious George got hit by a truck and died.

But when your kids are little, your barometer for success or failure as a parent reflects back at you.  You control their diet, their wardrobe, and their bedtime routine.  You can set firm rules and make sure they show respect for others.  You drag them to church and make them wash their hands and eat their carrots. And when you feel like a failure, you call up your really good friends– those who occasionally put their kids to bed without baths or pull out dirty clothes from the laundry pile on picture day – for moral support.  One such friend called me in horror of what she had done, like the Mother Gestapo would hunt her down and take away her Mother-of-the-Year pin.  Crippled by the stomach flu and a husband out of town on business, she locked all the doors, set out a platter of lunch meat, crackers, cheese, and cookies, and just let her children watch Dora the Explorer all day while she lay in bed clutching her abdomen.  Don’t sweat it, I told her on the phone. That will probably make their “best childhood memory” list. 

But then someday, something changes.  It’s not about you anymore. It actually never was. I recently got a note home from Kindergarten saying my daughter wasn’t following the rules, and she could stand to listen more, and that perhaps she needed some practice on the daily sound tests. My heart sank.  As my husband was brushing his teeth that night, I said surely this teacher didn’t really see our daughter’s true talents.  That she’s creative and curious and brilliant.  I wished there was something I could do to show her teacher just how fabulous she is.

“No one will ever see her like you do,” he said. “To you, she’s perfect. You’re her mother.”

I suppose that’s true.  Mothers only see the good things.  The bright, shiny mornings.  The giggles and thank-you’s and made-up stories about dancing monkeys. We snuggle and love and pray and give, assuming that all the work we put into our children will pay off. Like a bonus that’s supposed to arrive at the end of the year. But we forget that these are independent little people, separate and apart from us.  They are not vessels we just fill up and push out the door; they are unique creations from God.  They must learn to fail, and must face struggles of their own – some we might not always be able to fix.  That’s hard for us mothers.  The thought of our daughter getting a broken heart, or our son not making the team, is too difficult to bear.  We can’t always make it all better by holding them close and reading them stories.  Homemade macaroni-and-cheese with crunchy breadcrumb topping only goes so far.

So I suppose we must simply love.  When times get tough, or they don’t fit in, we just love some more.  After all, we’ve already got our bonus.  We get to be the loom upon which their lives are woven, and watch them grow into beautiful people.  They will overcome, and change, and beam with pride when discovering their true selves.  We’ll stand in the background, us mothers, and realize that it’s not about us after all.

Filed Under: Motherhood Tagged With: , , ,