THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, May 14, 1995 TAG: 9505100661
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
LENGTH: Medium: 100 lines
MOTHER'S DAY is about gifts freely given, and I got one the other day. The card, from Martha Estes Kalkhurst Milius of Virginia Beach, read in part:
``I wish to ask you a favor. If you have time this summer, I was wishing for you to tell me if my mother's little book of poems are good poems. She died in 1977. . . . ''
The small green volume accompanying the card bore the 1957 imprint of Banner Press, Emory University, Ga. The title: Man Has Forever by Dorothy Estes. Between the covers were 41 poems on 59 pages.
They were reprinted from such newspapers and periodicals as the Lakeland (Florida) Evening Ledger, the Jackson (Tennessee) Sun and the American Federationist.
And yes, Martha, they are good poems.
Dorothy Estes was 86 when she died. Martha, twice a grandmother, is 73. On page 19 I found Dorothy's own homage ``To My Mother,'' written in 1919:
Mother o' mine, I am soul of your soul
Just as I am bone of your bone;
And the thoughts I am thinking - thoughts new to me -
Are thoughts which were once your own;
And the dreams I am dreaming, so vast and deep
That they cannot be expressed,
You dreamed in that mystical long ago,
When close to your heart I pressed.
Mother o'mine there's the tiniest form
Wrapped in the folds near my heart,
And, oh, even now it is part of my dreams,
Of my very soul a part;
And the prayer I make this star-filled night
For this unborn child of mine,
Is that God will keep my soul's aim pure
And noble and high as thine.
A footnote reveals that the baby, a girl, lived only 48 hours.
``Mama had three children that didn't live,'' Martha told me. ``They were called `blue babies' in those days. She had six, and three of us survived.''
Dorothy was one of nine children born into the family of a former plantation owner in Newbern, Tenn.; her father died when she was 5.
``She had a pretty hard time, financially, growing up,'' Martha said.
Dorothy didn't go to college, but she made a living proofreading for the Jackson Sun, in Jackson, Tenn., where Martha was born.
``And she never made a mistake!'' Martha said.
Martha's father was a railroad engineer for Gulf, Mobile and Ohio. Dorothy wrote poems. Martha typed them up.
``Mama was an egghead,'' Martha said. ``I had two college graduate husbands, and she could hold her own with both of them.''
Dorothy taught Sunday school for 25 years in Jackson.
I cannot go upon a boat to picturesque Japan;
But I can read about it and make believe I can!
I may not visit China, it's so very far away,
But I can fancy how it looks upon a holiday.
I like to read of Switzerland, of Italy and France,
Of city street or peasant land where children sing and dance.
I get upon my book-boat and sail to far off lands
Where other children welcome me with eager, outstretched hands.
``She was the cleanest person that ever lived, and the best cook,'' Martha said. ``She sang a lot. She was always cheerful.''
Martha's no slouch, herself.
``She's a scream,'' reported her own daughter, Mitzi, 33, in town for a visit.
Mitzi has a television talk show in Aspen, Colo., and has become pals with the smart set there. Last Christmas, she had a dinner party for Jimmy Buffett and his band. Martha attended.
She was a hit.
``After she went to bed,'' Mitzi said, ``everybody raved she was the neatest lady they ever met. She's been the ideal mom for me. The best.''
Martha was widowed twice. Her first husband was New York stage actor Eric Kalkhurst. Her second was naval commander Gay Milius Jr.
``I got a lot of fun in life,'' Martha said. ``I raised a perfectly wonderful son who sells wind turbines in Johannesburg and a daughter that loves me. I even got three stepchildren I inherited in my second marriage.
``I always worked. I put all five of the kids through college. My husbands helped, of course.''
Any advice for other mothers on this, their day?
``All I know,'' Martha said, ``is you do the best you can.''
Rivers are givers of life and strength,
Of verdure and beauty and breadth and length,
Of depth, and vapors of moistened air;
And givers are rivers of answered prayer.
``She's sweet,'' said Mitzi of her mom, ``but she smokes too much.''
``Yeah, yeah, yeah,'' said Martha.
- MEMO: Bill Ruehlmann is a mass communication professor at Virginia Wesleyan
College. ILLUSTRATION: ADRIANA LIBREROS/Staff
Photo
Dorothy Estes
by CNB