I grew up knowing and ultimately being influenced by someone much older — 55 years older. Someone who had seen the worst of economic times when all that you ate depended on the weather and on how well you tended a garden and your animals.

By the time we met, most of the barnyard animals were gone except for a few old hens and a couple of brown eyed cows. Our economy had become one of plenty and plastic.

She had an old red truck then and shopped at Steins for milk, meat and dry goods, but she still had a garden for her vegetables; she would always have a garden.

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I suppose the garden had become more nourishment for her soul than her body, but either way, it was essential. Although times were changing and consumerism was on the rise, she never changed.  

When I think of her, I think of the natural world and how genuine she was and how kind she was to people and to the Earth; that was the emphasis. I doubt that I would remember her so well or cherish her so much had her life been about acquiring things.

It was the way she watered each plant in her garden before sunset, the way she let me sit on the comfortable rocker when I went to visit and she sat on the nagahyde couch, the way she listened to me when I was a teenager and needed to talk and it was the letters she sent when I moved away. Those are the things I remember.

She never spent anymore than a 5-cent stamp on me and she is someone I will never forget.

As these days bring more economic anguish and the news delivers more negativity, I continue to think more about her and about my mother.

I think of how she could prepare supper each night without a freezer full of meat and a pantry but with only a small freezer at the top of the icebox and two kitchen cabinet shelves where can goods, salt and pepper sat.

Seems to me, we weren’t nearly as needy then. I certainly speak for myself in a haze of shame on this subject.

I have a freezer with a ration of unidentifiable carcasses at the bottom of it, and my pantry is stocked for Armageddon. I also have a garden.  

I am thinking of my mother often and how she could easily survive this economic climate of uncertainty because of the prudent way she chose to live her life.

I am rambling a bit and straying from my usual subject matter, while scattering a bit of political gibberish, but there is a big day on the horizon and an uncertain breeze is drifting in, and we all should be mindful of our country’s future.

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The Full Hunter’s Moon was visible on Tuesday. It was imposing and beautiful as it rose, turning the whole town into a postcard. I don’t have a favorite color or a favorite season; as each begins, they become my “temporary” favorite.  

The smoke from the mill is being carried by the wind, telling us its direction, sugarcane tractors are waddling along country roads in the early morning mist, bales of hay and carroty colored pumpkins are sitting on porches, little heaps of raked leaves are smoldering in backyards, and gumbos are simmering on stoves; I do believe, it is fall in south Louisiana.

PAM SHENSKY is the mother of five and a teacher at New Iberia Senior High.