With a Little Help from Mama

It was a beautiful spring morning when Mama and I set off from our ranch in Oklahoma for Nashville, where I was going to audition for a recording contract. I was 20 years old, well-prepared vocally, ready to take a chance on the dream of a lifetime.

But as the hillsides rolled by, resplendent with the whites and pinks of dogwood and redbud blossoms, I felt a creeping uneasiness. The closer we got to the country music capital, the more I tried to prolong the trip, making Mama detour for some sightseeing, then for a snack, then for anything I could think of. Finally I yelled, "Stop!" and Mama pulled the big blue Ford into a Dairy Queen on the side of the highway and we went inside.

As I toyed with my mountain of ice cream, I didn't have to explain I was scared. Mama knew me too well. "Reba Nell," she said, adding the Nell for gentle emphasis, "we can turn around right now and go on back home if that's what you want, and I'll understand. The music business is not for everyone."

I looked at Mama across the melting swirl of my sundae. She wasn't pushing me. But when she was my age, Mama would have given just about anything to have had the opportunity I was getting a chance at now. I wondered if that was what was confusing me.

We'd always had a special bond. Maybe it was because of my singing. Music had gone way back in Mama's life. But right out of high school she had to take a teaching job, working in a two-room schoolhouse. Then she married, worked as an assistant to the school superintendent, and did all the bookkeeping on our ranch while raising four kids.

Mama and I were middle kids, both the third of four children. Being a middle kid, I was always looking for attention. I was a tomboy, doing everything my older brother, Pake, did. "Anything you can do I can do better!" was our sibling motto, whether it was throwing rocks and doing chin-ups, or riding horses and roping. I was out to be the best, to get the attention. Then I learned to sing.

I remember in the second grade, my music teacher, pretty Mrs. Kanton, helped me learn "My Favorite Things" from The Sound of Music. When I went home and sang it for Mama, her eyes met mine and just sort of glowed. It tickled me to think I could make Mama react like that, and to hear adults say that I was gifted.

That's what my grandmother—Mama's mother and my namesake—used to say when I was growing up. But she called it a special gift, a gift from God. I was almost as close to her as I was to Mama. Grandma used to take me fishing at a pond on her place. We never did catch much, but we liked to throw in our lines and sit on the pond dam while Grandma told stories, mostly from the Bible. She told me about David, Moses and Daniel, and the special gifts that God had given them, like courage and leadership and prophecy. In fact, David was a songwriter.