Donna Foley Mabry > Quotes

“The pain never really goes away. It gets better, and you finally get to a place where you aren’t thinking about it every minute of every day.”
― Donna Mabry, Maude

“She didn’t go in chronological order, but spoke of whatever came to her mind. One night she would talk of her childhood, another of the wars or the depression. Sometimes she talked about losing four of her five children. It wasn’t until many years later when I repeated some of these things to my daughter that I fully realized how epic a tale my grandmother’s life had actually been. My daughter said to me, “Why don’t you write it down for me?”
― Donna Mabry, Maude

“Whither thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest, I will lodge, and thy people shall be my people and thy God, my God.”
― Donna Mabry, Maude

“the Lord himself shall descend from heaven with a shout, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trump of God: and the dead in Christ shall rise first: Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”
― Donna Mabry, Maude

“There was a Baptist church to the east end and a Holiness church to the west. My family was Holiness, and our lives revolved around our church. We went to meeting Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday night.”
― Donna Mabry, Maude

“Well, I guess there’s say-so Christians, and there’s real Christians.”
― Donna Mabry, Maude

“patience was a virtue.”
― Donna Mabry, Maude

“Gene put his hand on mine and told me what went on at the hospital, “I don’t know what happened to me, Mom. When I saw that baby it was like a whole part of me that I didn’t even know existed woke. My mind hasn’t been off her for a split second ever since. I thought that I could never love anyone the way I love Evelyn, but that baby has changed my mind. I don’t care if she does belong to someone else, she’s mine. Does that make any sense at all?” I rocked and nodded. “It’s a funny thing, that feeling. It doesn’t always come when it’s supposed to, and sometimes it happens when you weren’t even looking for it.”
― Donna Mabry, Maude

“and then cried for the first time, but it wasn’t a sorrowful crying. I was so awful angry that the Lord had let this happen, angry right down to the marrow of my bones. It made me even more afraid to feel that way. I had been taught, and I believed, that it was a sin to be angry with God. I was afraid that God would punish me for the way I felt.”
― Donna Mabry, Maude

“didn’t pick up a handful of dirt to throw. I couldn’t do it. Momma hated dirt.”
― Donna Mabry, Maude

“I also think that sometimes the good stretches are so good that it must count for double time,”
― Donna Mabry, Maude

“I think now God gives each one of us a measure of happiness for our lives, and some are allowed more than others.”
― Donna Mabry, Maude

“There’s a peacefulness that comes over you when you sew. I guess that it’s because you don’t think about any of your worries, you just let your mind work on the fabric and the thread. When you concentrate on one small section at a time, it’s almost a surprise when it’s finished and you see it as completed work.”
― Donna Mabry, Maude

“at Kowalski’s notes and kind of memorize the parts about”
― Donna Foley Mabry, The Case Files of Molly Evers: 1949

“Nola Maude Clayborn in 1892, in Perkinsville, in the northwest corner of Tennessee, a few miles west of Dyersburg.”
― Donna Mabry, Maude

“The Civilian Conservation Corps, the CCC, was set up in 1933 to give work to young men who were unemployed and whose families were having a hard time of it. President Roosevelt had just changed the age minimum for the Corps and Gene joined up to go off on what he expected to be a great adventure, rebuilding the roads, bridges, and forests of America.”
― Donna Mabry, Maude

“works out the way I expect.” “That’s because you’re never able to learn from your mistakes. You keep doing the same things over and over. I hoped you would change. I wanted so much for us to be a family that I kept”
― Donna Mabry, Jessica

“you the best I know how. I’m going to make you little dresses and gowns with flowers stitched on them, and when your hair gets long enough, if it doesn’t curl on its own, I’m going to wind it up in curls every night.” I patted my tummy and the precious life inside it and smiled to myself. I was so happy. The morning sickness passed in a few weeks. I was grateful I didn’t suffer with it the way Helen had, almost until the end of her time. After a while, my clothes began to tug across my middle. I had taken to lifting the waistline a little to ease the pull. James’s mother brought me some big aprons and some new fabric. “If you wear an apron you don’t have to button your dress in the middle, and that will get you through”
― Donna Mabry, Maude

“Whither thou goest, I will go, and where thou lodgest, I will”
― Donna Mabry, Maude

“Tommy and the preacher set up the bed in the room meant for the baby. Tommy cried as he carried the cradle to the barn, and Brother Clark patted him on the back and re-assured him that someday he could carry it back in the house.”
― Donna Mabry, Maude

“I didn’t pack him a lunch to take for his trip. I was glad he was gone. That night I asked God to help me deal with my feelings, or lack of them, for my oldest son and to help me fight hating George for making me feel so helpless. It was as if I had no say over what went on in my own house.”
― Donna Mabry, Maude

“I’d already been an orphan, a wife, and a mother. Now I was a widow. I was only three months past my sixteenth birthday.  ”
― Donna Mabry, Maude

“When a shirt or piece of clothing got too frayed to wear, I always took the buttons and hooks off and saved them. The fabric made dust cloths. George was”
― Donna Mabry, Maude

“Grandma Maude and Donna”
― Donna Foley Mabry, Maude

“I said a prayer, and he”
― Donna Mabry, Maude

“a man I could be proud of. I hoped that someday he would give up his dream of winning Evelyn back and find another partner to share his life. Then, there was Donna. She was a strange, independent child, coming and going as she wanted, living where she chose, but I loved her and was proud of her, too. So I counted my failures and counted my blessings. It wasn’t a regular prayer, but I finally was able to sleep so I could face the next day. Chapter 69 George spent more and more time in the back yard, talking to Stella over the fence. I didn’t pay that much attention to it. In his late seventies, he didn’t ask me for relations anymore, and that was a relief to me. One Tuesday in 1958 I came out of the basement door carrying a basket of laundry. When I opened the door, George was in Stella’s yard, his hands cupped around her face, kissing her on the cheek. Stella was leaning into him, with an easy familiarity.”
― Donna Mabry, Maude

“baby.” They all knew what”
― Donna Mabry, Maude

“I’d already been an orphan, a wife, and a mother. Now I was a widow. I was only three months past my sixteenth birthday.”
― Donna Mabry, Maude

“When Paul’s shoe soles wore out, I couldn’t find leather pieces to mend them, so I cut a stack of cardboard in the shape of the insoles and padded them so they would last longer. He changed the liners every night. I wore heavy cotton stockings instead of nylon, and when the elastic garters wore out I learned to stick my finger in the top of the hose, twist it several times and tuck it in the binding to make it stay up. I wore them until the toes and heels were completely gone and I had blisters on my feet. It wasn’t long until every one of the women in my house was wearing white anklets. They lasted better than stockings.”
― Donna Foley Mabry, Maude

“rented a large three-story house on the corner of Kercheval”
― Donna Mabry, Maude