Appalachian Tradition of Rooting
I come from a long line of Appalachian women. Strong-hearted, every single one of them. Not a regular church goer among the whole lot of them, but they could recite all the books of the Bible and John 3:16, and The Great Commission without hesitation. They could also out cuss any fool, man or woman, who dared to cross them, and only a fool would.
They were a hard working bunch. They couldn’t sit still to save their lives. There was always something that needed tending to. Even my crippled granny would roll her chair out to the yard and lean over to do the weeding, yanking up the stray dandelion with her knotted up arthritic fingers.
Worry will kill you quicker than work ever will, my own mama used to say. She claimed it was her own mother – Granny Ruth – who taught her that. “Root little pig or die,” was the other thing she attributed to Granny Ruth. After Mama became a war widow, that saying defined her life. She’d quote it from time to time, always with a wry grin, knowing the truth of it for her own life, I suspect.
All the women in my life – Appalachian or otherwise – have modeled that very thing. For a woman to survive in this world we have to root. Dig. Turn things over. Be relentless. Avoid distractions. Ignore the naysayers. Make a lot of noise. Confront any fears. Stare down those who get in our way. Push through. Work alongside each other.
Sure, I’ve known women who can’t be bothered with rooting. They’ve settled for a world run by patriarchs designed to serve patriarchs. You can spot them a mile away. They appear to be embalmed already. The struggle to think for themselves too great of a burden, so they live a life of servitude, most often in exchange for shiny baubles that tarnish over time. They wear a choker of boredom about their throats. Their voices long gone mute, all that remains is the monotone of willful obedience to a master they resent. But these women, they are not my people. I have no kinship with weak-willed women hiding behind religion as a front for their complicity in creating a world that prioritizes the demands of men.
Years ago I spent the night in a jail cell. It was my choice. The Sheriff arrested me on a concocted DUI charge so that I could write about what jail was like for an inmate. I was allowed to speak with other inmates. There was one woman in particular that chatted me up, then proudly showed me the rose tat on her right breast. I thought of her years later when at a literary event in Jacksonville, Florida, the author of Why I Wore Lipstick to My Mastectomy pulled up her shirt on the elevator to reveal to me the rose tat that replaced her nipple following her cancer surgery.
These are my kind of women. They know how important rooting is to their very survival.
My sister is a rooter, having faced her own battle with breast cancer, providing care for a family member with dementia, all while serving as the educator/director of her church’s preschool/daycare for nearly 40 years. She’s raised up generations of girls who themselves became rooters.
My three daughters are rooters. Among them they are raising up seven children, six of them boys. How do you raise boys to be men who are advocates for women? Men who honor Creator but reject the notion that women were created to serve them? Men who reject the notion of patriarchy altogether, even though it benefits them? It’s a challenge, especially when the leader of the country is a rapist and a felon and has modeled nothing but racism, sexism and criminal behavior for decades. It’s an uphill challenge but the girls are determined to do just that.
All my life, I’ve been surrounded by women who root. From my grandmothers to my daughters. From strangers to friends. From teachers to fellow writers. From Gold Star wives, to Gold Star mothers, to Gold Star daughters. Rooters all.
From readers of all ilk. Those who do not root loathe my work. I’m okay with that. Those who do not root do not like to think and I write to encourage thinking among women and men alike.
Women who root come from all parts of the world. In Scotland I met a woman on a walk who in the 1970s challenged Scotland’s adoption laws. She wanted to be a mother but she had never married. So she fought the law and eventually adopted numerous orphaned children and raised those girls up to be rooters, too.
This Mother’s Day, I am thinking of all you women out there who have learned to “root little pig or die.” I hope you hear me cheering you for being the kind of women who have dug in and are relentlessly committed to doing the most good you can, by all the means you can, in all the ways you can, in all the places you can, at all the times you can, to all the people you can, as long as you can.
I see you. I admire you. I’m rooting for you!
Here’s a link to a favorite podcast from this year about one woman who rooted her way into a new career in tribute to her own mother and grandmother. Hope you enjoy it.
What was one of your momma’s sayings that remains with you now?
No Comments