Momma Jacquie Paid For Food Prep

 

She had a lot of names: Her birth name was Jacqueline Thompson, but she wanted a middle name and gave herself one; Jean.  Her married name was Norris.  Her daughters called her Mother.  Most of you knew her as Jackie, unless you were kin and then it was Aunt Jack, Momma Jack or, as I called her, Momma Jacquie.  NO ONE called her Grandma, even though she had 8 grandchildren and I don’t even know how many great grandchildren.

 

She insisted that I never call her Grandma and explained that it was because she was too young to be my grandmother.  Being a child, I took that literally and wondered who my grandmother was, in this huge family of ours, if it wasn’t possible for her to be old enough.  There was the suspicious issue of my cousin Scott being born the same day as me.  In my young, conspiracy theory laden head, I thought maybe we were twins,  separated at birth and that Scott’s mom, Mary, who was Momma Jacquie’s sister, was my real mom and THAT’s why Momma Jacquie wasn’t old enough to be my grandmother.

 

I’d stare long and hard at Scott and his parents, but didn’t see me in them.  I looked like my Dad and sounded like my Mom, so I grew up unsure of how the family tree really was rooted.  That uncertainty was compounded by the fact that I grew up with two sets of parents.  My own, Barbara and Vernon Stairs, and the people, who weren’t old enough to be my grandparents, who had me call them BigDaddy and Momma Jacquie.

 

I’d heard stories about Momma Jacquie growing up in Arkansas,picking cotton, and how she’d married at the age of 16 to escape the hard life of being the eldest girl of 8 children who were all raised during the great depression.  But by the time she was 18 she had two daughters of her own, Carole (my aunt) and Bar-Jean (my mother.)

 

My mother was born first, in 1941, and named after most of her aunts.  Knowing the way this family loves to name their daughters after all their sisters, it was a good thing thatMomma Jacquie’s youngest sister wasn’t even born until after the birth of my mother, or else she would have ended up with a name like:  Mary Barbara Jean Trena Norris Stairs.

 

My Aunt Carole was born in 1942, just days before the death of a film star comedienne that must have captivated Momma Jacquie’s imagination, because she was named after Carole Lombard, complete with the E at the end of her name, to be sure that she was not just any Carol, but rather named for the famous actress.  For those who aren’t old enough to remember, Carole Lombard was married to Clark Gable and they were the Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie of their era.

 

Momma Jacquie’s favorite actress was the comedienne, Lucille Ball, who rose to stardom in 1951 in the show with her husband, Desi Arnaz, in I Love Lucy.  What some of you may not remember, but I’m sure Momma Jacquie  did, was that Lucille Ball was the first woman to run a major television studio.  It was known for producing StarTrek and Mission Impossible.  Thankfully that didn’t happen until a year after my birth or she may have insisted that my parents name me Lucy.

 

My mother tells me that despite the financial difficulties that must have been inherent in her family they had one of the first television sets.  As I think back about the timing, Momma Jacquie went straight from the depression era to being married with 2 children during World War II.  Big Daddy had been building orange crates for just pennies in California, and then a soldier and then a police officer while Momma Jacquie was doing her part for the war effort by working at Delco Remy which switched from manufacturing General Motors automobiles to military vehicles during the war.  She had done some modeling and even had a nose job done because she wanted to look like the perfect, all American girl, and thought her Indian nose might stereotype her.

 

I can imagine that during such hard and trying times she must have turned on that TV and felt the sort of escape that o