My Story of Sara Grace (Part I)

This is a story about Sara Grace, the woman and the boat. First the woman (Part 1), and then the boat (Part II)

My desire to write about my mother-in-law, Sara Grace, was coupled with trepidation that I could never find the words to describe her complexity and what she meant to me. She was elegant and graceful, reserved, and circumspect. Quiet as snow, she kept her thoughts to herself, with little show of outward emotion. Then suddenly, as in a cloud burst, she would say something outrageously funny, playful, or bodacious and I realized that this animated spirit was there all along. I just had difficulty reading her. Difficulty appreciating her way of reading life and showing love.

She grew up in Fort Smith, Arkansas, with two older brothers, George and Fred. Her father ran a newsstand at a local hotel. Her mother, Ruth Nix was gifted with spectacular beauty and a vivacious and generous spirit inherited from her father, Eldridge Darling Nix.

Although I never heard her play the piano, Sara Grace, apparently, had a gift for music. Her parents, of modest means, gave her a baby grand piano for her twelfth birthday and as a young woman she had the dream and subsequent success of going to New York and studying at Juilliard on a scholarship after winning the state piano competition. Her brother teased that when there was a chore to do around the house, she suddenly had to practice piano, which excused her from the chore.

Most likely she developed her flair for fashion in New York. She loved beautiful clothing and apparently, attractive men as well. After her death in 2002, we found two small journals of her years at Julliard and Columbia with multiple photos of her in gorgeous outfits, sitting in the same position, beside a different fellow on the overlook of the Empire State Building.

She married one of them, a flamboyant guy, great talker and good looker, Charles Llewellyn, Jr, who was a Psychiatry intern at Bellevue Hospital. He proposed to her during a Virginia Beach holiday and fed her raw oysters from a fisherman's wharf. From that moment, she developed a passion for raw oysters. Love will do that.

All the glamorous photos and dazzling smiles show a woman believing she will find the pearl in the oyster. I keep a photo of her taken on that weekend, and the sunglasses she was wearing, on my bureau, an ever present reminder to hold fast to your dreams.

The old photos surprised me because the woman I met, when I was age twenty-seven, had a stately and quiet demeanor. She held life's disappointments and dreams close to her chest. The photos made me realize how little I really knew her, and to suffer from all the lost questions I should have asked about her fascinating past. To look beyond the reserve and see the twinkle in her eye, to be aware of the clues she dropped along the path.

When it was time to get a new car, she always announced that she wanted a red convertible, and just as predictably, her husband bought her something sensible, a remainder on the lot when new cars were released. She was frugal with household purchases, saving extra for clothing. For any special event, she wore a stunning outfit, something a bit sassy, always the style icon. When she visited us overseas, I saw an aptitude for travel and exploration. When she played zoo with our daughter and her stuffed animals, or crawled into her grandson's cardboard box hide-away, I saw a spirit that lay in wait.

I can’t picture her as a mother with three rambunctious boys. She seemed too elegant and reserved for the grubby work of being a mother, but two stories give clues that she did a great job. She carried her sons' pet goldfish in a plastic bag on the airplane when they moved from Colorado to Texas. She tolerated my husband's love of reptiles that he collected in the basement and one of his specimens, a black snake, made its way upstairs to Sara Grace's closet and made a nest of her soft leather shoes. That was a fright I could not imagine but she took motherhood in stride.

My husband, Charles, remembers that she played the organ in church services, but always considered it a step down from her Juilliard training with some of the piano greats. At home, the children were enthralled by her hands racing down the keyboard practicing a Chopin piece. She tried to teach the boys, but discovered they did not have her genes for music. In later years, she developed arthritis in her fingers and stopped playing.

She wasn't easily flummoxed. After all, her name, Sara, translates to "princess" and Grace means "politeness of manner". And when she was upset or disappointed, she met it with stoicism; she bore heart aches alone. She never gossiped. We knew that if we did, she would kindly remind us, "If you can't say something good about someone, then say nothing at all."

Her middle child, George, died at seventeen and not only broke her stride, but most likely brought her to her knees. Her husband, Charlie, insisted that extended grief could not bring back George and that it was a priority to focus on the living sons, and help them to cope and move on. She bore her pain in silence that shrouded the rest of her life. She was the same sweet woman, but with an under layer of grief. How does one lose a child and carry on? In this way, I suppose.

Every weekend at their Kerr Lake retreat she completed a jigsaw puzzle. Every morning, at her house in Durham, she completed a crossword puzzle, her dog at her feet, before she could begin her day.

The two dogs she loved over the years included a cocker spaniel, GEL, and a poodle named Sam. Both of the dogs were cast-offs from her husband's psychiatric patients. She did not choose them but she loved them with devotion. Same with her sons, their wives and three grandchildren.

She usually wore a skirt, sometimes slacks, always dressed neatly with an armful of delicate gold bangles, a gold filigree heart pendant that my husband and I bought for her in Ecuador, or her mother-in-law's diamond pendant when she dressed for an occasion. Her daily life followed a ritual of activities done at the same time in the same way. With afternoon, came the dread of cooking dinner, which she tempered with one glass of bourbon and wink.

While hating to cook, she perfected some delicious meals, which she served to us when we came to visit. Jet lagged from a long flight home, we were welcomed with hugs and her rich, savory vegetable beef soup with a dollop of sour cream.

After college, her son, Richard, lived with them when he started a new job in Durham. She was forever grateful for the tradition Richard launched to explore a different restaurant every Tuesday night, his treat, while living with them. After Richard married Lynn and set up his own house, Charlie continued the Tuesday night ritual, realizing how much it meant to Sara Grace to have a night off from cooking. Over time, Charlie developed enthusiasm for selecting restaurants, meeting chefs, and pleasing his wife with a night out. I saw that if she had asked for more of the things she wanted, her husband would have gladly delivered. He just didn't think of it on his own.

Her husband had one sister, Ann, and both families went to Richmond for Thanksgiving dinner hosted by their mother, Pearl Ann Shields Llewellyn. When Pearl Ann gave up housekeeping, her two children decided to alternate years hosting both a visit from mother and Thanksgiving dinner for both families.

On the drive home from Thanksgiving in Greensboro, Sara Grace, started to dread hosting the next year's dinner for a dozen family members, growing to twenty with marriages and grandchildren. When the day of doom arrived, Sara Grace looked beautiful, covering a bundle of nerves. The year a Pyrex serving dish exploded with glass splintering into half the dinner brought the Thanksgiving tradition to an end. She couldn't demand that this ritual causing her so much anxiety should be stopped, but sometimes her message came through in interesting ways. At a young age, our children quickly deciphered that when grand-mom says something is "interesting," that means she doesn't like it.

A sweet man but tone deaf, Charlie gave her a new kitchen gadget every Christmas. Imagine opening an electric potato peeler and expressing gratitude with clenched teeth. Christmas morning took an upswing for Sara Grace after Charlie took on a patient who was a fine gold and jewel smith. Through this acquaintance, it occurred to him that the patient's gallery would be a good place to shop for Sara Grace at holiday time. The first year he gave her grey pearls. The next year she received a diamond tennis bracelet, made personal with a diamond inset from a family antique. Christmas took on an 18 kt brilliance. Bit by bit, Sara Grace got the fine jewelry that she wanted. She never asked for something, but did a good job of reinforcing the giver when she or he got it right.

I remember the first time I met her. Charles and I were dating and she invited me to their house for dinner. I asked how I could help. She counted out the pieces of silverware and laid the pile on the formal dining table. She told me I could help by setting the table. I stood there terrified, not knowing how the pieces should be arranged on the starched, crochet placemats. In an attempt to overcome my dilemma, I said, "Could you show me how you would like them to be arranged?" She looked at me with only a nano-second of surprise, and proceeded to arrange the multiple pieces of silver on one placemat as my example to follow.

In all my early married years, she never corrected or embarrassed me as she taught me the finer arts of living and dressing through her example. In those early days of marriage, our finances were tight, so I was delighted when she asked if I wanted to go shopping and have lunch out. I knew she would buy beautiful clothing for me. A tradition she carried on with our daughter, Bronwyn. At lunch she ordered a fruit salad with cottage cheese, while I gorged on a Reuben and chips. Today I eat the cottage cheese with fruit and nuts and remember our "girls' day out."

When Charles and I decided to live together a year before marriage, we found a cottage to rent near Charles's old neighborhood. Sara Grace was uncomfortable about this decision, made worse because she had to pass our house to leave hers. In spite of that, she always treated me with kindness and affection.

While living in Bolivia, the embassy medical officer sent me to the United States for screening a medical issue, out of an abundance of caution. I decided to travel to Durham and combine the medical exam with a visit to Sara Grace and Charlie. The tests were followed by two procedures, each requiring six weeks of bed rest.

The brief visit turned into a twelve bedridden week stay, half the time with a toddler roaming the house. I don't remember asking them if I could stay, they just took me in as families do. I was too self-focused to fully realize what a strain this put on Sara Grace, especially around mealtime. She never had a meltdown. She never lost her temper with me, or my son, Chas, but am sure she was relieved when I was allowed to return to Bolivia.

I learned a lot while living with her for twelve weeks. She disliked domestic chores, yet she had high standards for housekeeping. Her spices were kept in alphabetical order, her towels folded just so and precisely stacked in the linen closet, her copper bottom pans used since her wedding, hung gleaning from above the stove. She had a system for making grocery lists and never running out of an item. Her theory was that if everything was tidy no one noticed the dust. I adopted many of her practices and thus I never mind when someone pops in unannounced because everything is in place. She taught me how to create an overall sense of order, perhaps glazing over what lies beneath.

She was much too talented to be a housewife who had to ask her husband for anything that she wanted. By example, she helped me to see that women need to have their own resources, control over their lives, and a sense of purpose derived from their own hopes, talents, and dreams.

I saw her badly ruffled, two times. Thanksgiving dinner already mentioned, the other time involved the inheritance of land from her mother's estate. One brother had his mother sign over the land to him before her death, assuming that as eldest son, the estate was rightfully his. After her mother's death, Sara Grace and her other brother took the land battle to court and were awarded equal rights to the land. Later I realized why she was so determined to act in a way that was far out of character. This was her one chance to have and control her own resources.

In 2017 a portion of this land was sold and each of the living heirs, four grandchildren, including my husband receive $20,000. We decided to use our share of his mother's hard fought inheritance to buy our "compromise" boat. We thought nothing could have made Sara Grace happier than to give us a gift to enjoy our life by the sea.

Unlike Sara Grace, I had no shyness about asking Charles for gifts that I wanted, and high on my list when we moved to Beaufort was purchasing a boat.

My position: "How can we live in this setting without a boat to explore the islands or watch a spectacular sunset over the water?"

His response: "I have a boat."

My response: "The Hobie Cat is uncomfortable and turns over, and there are sharks out there. I want a party boat, one with comfortable seats where I can read books, serve a picnic, and drink wine. A pontoon boat would be nice."

His response: "I'm not dead yet. That's a boat for old men."

Like Sara Grace, I learned that it is not easy to get a red convertible (or a party boat) when your husband is focused on his own finances, interests and practicalities. But thankfully, my daughter, Bronwyn, had my back, and master-minded a deal.

In next month's blog I'll tell you the story about how I got my boat, which we fittingly named Sara Grace. When we take our boat out on the sea I think of her namesake. It's good to remember how much she loved her son and me, and that by fighting for what was rightfully hers, she was able to give us this parting gift.

It's not a red convertible, but close.