After the flood ... A tender branch
Last time, I told you about our flood of October 1998. There was another survivor I did not tell you about and her name was Mrs. Bailey.
Perhaps you remember me saying I followed my teaching career in Houston with 17 years of real estate.
In the fall of 1978, a relocation lead came in from another company in our network located in New Mexico. An agent there requested someone from our office list her grandmother’s house in Houston. This appointment fell to me.
We didn’t have use of the computer programs that came out later. It took me six hours to do my homework in order to create my listing package.
I went to the given address the following morning, already having learned the house was built in 1915. But what I didn’t know is that NO repairs had been made since then! Making matters worse, it was located in a very dangerous part of town.
My feathers fell when I saw the dilapidated house and I quickly tried to compose a “thank you but no thank you” speech for the agent in New Mexico. I’m thinking all this while traversing a cracked sidewalk to broken steps leading to a sagging porch. I lightly knocked on the door behind the burglar gate. Maybe not home?
But just as I turned to leave, the door opened and I met the lady of the house, Mrs. Bailey. Following her inside, she led me to a couch.
The interior, too, was in shambles, everything covered in dog hair and their leavings on the floor. I heard ferocious barking from behind the kitchen door.
She, however, wore a reasonably clean polyester pantsuit and sported earrings. Lipstick had been applied near her mouth. She was 96, frail, and hard of hearing. She showed me her special amplifier phone, saying she’d been watching for my car for over an hour. I spoke my words just short of a shout to which she nodded in return.
After half an hour, my speech turning down the offer suddenly dissolved as I learned more about the person sitting across from me. This lady stole my heart! Suddenly, my briefcase was open and I found myself leading her through the paperwork. Leaving, I placed a “For Sale” sign in her yard with her asking price which was at best $50,000 too high for the neighborhood. Back at the office, my broker said I’d lost my mind!
Over the following months, I had only three appointments. Two of those drove away without going inside. Yet I kept in touch with Mrs. Bailey and frequently traveled across town to visit her.
Some days I carried her Kentucky Fried Chicken. She loved it. Other times, maybe a hamburger or doughnuts. We’d visit around her kitchen table
and I would steel myself against the dog smell and overflowing garbage around us. She was so lonely.
One day, I learned her story. She had been born in East Texas, had married a man from Houston who built this house for her but was abusive. They had one daughter, the mother of the granddaughter mentioned, who abandoned the child early on and Mrs. Bailey had raised her. She kept in touch from New Mexico. No one else in the family “bothers with me” she said sadly. By the way, I extended the listing another six months. My entire office went into shock.
The following fall, when this extension expired, my broker refused to allow another re-newal.
The day I went to take down my sign, she was waiting. She looked sad, forlorn, watching me from the porch.
“Now, just because I don’t have your house listed any longer doesn’t mean I won’t still come by to see you sometime and I will continue to call you.”
She brightened a bit before her face clouded again. “How much do I owe you?”
“I didn’t sell your house, so you owe me nothing.” She studied me a minute before asking,
“Do you like flowers?” When I nodded, she led me over to a number of flower pots sitting on cinder blocks at the side of the porch.
“You just pick one out. I want to give you one.” I really didn’t know which to choose.
Her gnarled old hands reached down and she handed me one, “Take this ‘un–cause it’s a good ‘un!” Thanking her and giving her one more hug, I told her I would cherish the plant and name it “Mrs. Bailey” after her. For the first time since I’d known her, she chuckled.
Well, I took “Mrs. Bailey” home with me along with memories of a great lady. I did continue to visit her until she moved to New Mexico a few months later. The family had the house torn down and the lot sold to a neighbor. I missed her.
The granddaughter called my office to tell me of her death the following year. But her name-sake-plant flourished on my patio throughout the many 100 degrees of a Houston summer and the Christmas freeze of ‘82. She wilted each time but in time came back strong.
During Hurricane Alicia in ‘83, she was blown and dashed about the yard, only to be found by our fallen fence. Once again, she defied all odds, sprouting new life in the spring. But when we were flooded here in October of 1998, I knew I’d lost her forever to the river.
Almost a year later, FEMA came to raze our house. That morning I read my Bible reading, Job 14:7 “For there is hope of a tree, if it be cut down, it will sprout again, and that the tender branch thereof will not cease.”
I told my husband I had to be there when our house was torn down. My moment of closure. After the last wall fell (me, crying) and we were driving back to our new home, I spied a broken pot under a tree across the street. Mrs. Bailey!!! With the tiniest bit of green showing from a broken stem. A tender shoot! A tender branch! Never to be silenced!
That "great lady" endured a drought, a freeze, a hurricane and a flood, yet she refused to give up, just like her namesake. That’s the mettle she’s made of! Today, she still flourishes, larger and more beautiful than ever. ‘Cause she’s a good ‘un!!!!!