Twins Mark 80th Birthday

A recent family "come-together" honored two grand dames: matriarchs who, coincidentally, survive as witnesses to an astonishing run of American history.

"They remember picking cotton as little girls," said one grandchild. Another recalled, "They rode to church in a buggy. It was pulled by a mule."

"The mule was named Molly," said a third granddaughter, laughing over an anecdote that young people today consider incredulous: "Imagine, riding in a family-wagon with a mule pulling it!"

Twins Letha Wages Still and Lema Wages Hardegree, Georgia country women who surely know their way around a kitchen, are marking birthday No. 80. It was time for their families to say, "Amen."

Born on a farm outside Dacula, just a crossroads community northeast of Atlanta in March of 1923, the sisters live today within easy distance of the onetime home place. They are mothers of six adult children and grandmothers to nine young women and men, and it's no exaggeration to report their lives have centered upon family and faith.

Letha Still, my mother-in-law, wears out the mile of two-lane blacktop from her driveway to Ebenezer Baptist Church. She makes the drive at least twice every Sunday, and then once more on Wednesday night.

Come Monday, she drives her pickup truck, delivering audio-tapes of Sunday's sermon at the homes of shut-ins. She is particularly welcome around Christmas, because a mound of homemade peanut brittle accompanies each tape.

Now, there is nothing fancy about our annual birthday celebrations. People show up bearing a hot dish or a desert. Being Baptists, alcohol officially is a no-show. In its place, deserts become the temptation! I favor Letha's pound cake, which I judge is professional enough to turn even Betty Crocker envious.

First comes the neighborly visiting. Next is the dedicated eating, buffet style, followed by a cutting of twin cakes. On cue, a cache of presents appears and thereafter the crowd drifts onto the broad deck out back. Someone then urges the honorees to dance. Lema and Letha kick off their shoes and do their version of a depression era Charleston.

The inevitable clapping, hollering and stomping encourages these busy-feet octogenarians to turn it up a notch. Once more, the soul-mate sisters born of a single egg, belie their considerable age. They quit only when someone unplugs the music box.

It has not been aerobic workouts that have kept Letha and Lema energetic. Rather, it's been their lifestyle, meaning farm work, housework, gardening: outdoors, indoors, wherever husbands, offspring, or neighbors needed their help. To describe these women-and surely they are a disappearing type- you call up the adjectives selfless, patient, frugal, loving and undemanding.

All about them, life is speeding up, and changing. Widow Letha surveys her world from a one-story brick home situated on 100 acres of rolling countryside. Cows share the land with her, as do 52,000 chickens from time to time. In rubber boots, and with a scarf covering her hair, she marches through those elongated, sweet-smelling houses, feeding and watering the scatter-brained birds. (Aside: no grandchild is about to follow this example of industry and determination-surely not at age 80.)

Meanwhile, the once bucolic, still handsome countryside is being devoured by land-grabbers. Clusters of new homes today ring the farm perimeter, drawing ever closer each month. And so, the birthday of these family builders seems to mean more each year, even as it marks the relentless passage of time.

Consider, Letha and Lema are two who demonstrate, by lives of constancy and quiet dignity, what it is to lead-not by money, or iron discipline, or through fiat-but instead by example.

As a salute to their lives, I volunteer an observation: author Florida Scott- Maxwell wrote in "The Measure of My Days" (Penguin Books; 1968), "Life has to be hard to have any effects upon us." The twins understand and exemplify that. So, too, do they embody this Scott-Maxwell dictum: "We who are old know that age is more than disability. It is an intense and varied experience, almost beyond our capacity at times, but something to be carried high."