Haun Family Ways
My first reading of The Hawk's Done Gone made me feel like I was back in my grandmother's kitchen, listening to her tell stories and offer tiny bits of wisdom—usually in the form of warnings. Don't break a mirror. Don't tell your dreams before breakfast. If a bird flies toward you, run the other way. All of these predicted a bad fortune and were omens of coming tragedy.
Mildred Haun's words were familiar for a reason. When I shared the book with my mother, she told me I was related to Mildred Haun. As a young writer, this news was both welcome and mysterious. Why hadn't I ever met her? Why didn't mom ever tell me we had a famous writer in the family? Where did she live?
My mom matter-of-factly told me that Mildred had died just a few years before I was born. Mom wasn't sure what relation we were, maybe fourth cousins or something like that on my grandmother's side of the family. Further research on my part, revealed my mom and Mildred are first cousins once removed, although my mom still doesn't believe the relationship is as close.
Mom didn't know Mildred. She knew her brother as he would come courting my mom's paternal aunt. My mom said Mildred had done very well for herself, getting far away from the Dover community where both their lives began. Despite Mildred's travels and success, my mom and I sensed the writer was still at heart a Haun from Dover. She had not risen above her raisin', an unpardonable sin for some family members.
Mildred's success meant breaking the Haun family tradition. That tradition, which probably predates the Woolly Mammoth, was simple: find a farmer, become a wife, have kids. Of course, there's nothing wrong with women who make that choice. For most Haun women, it wasn't a choice. It was the way it was going to be. Breaking that tradition and heading off alone to Vanderbilt University and a career must have required a lot of spunk. After all, my grandmother Josephine received more than a few criticisms for taking her first job in a bakery. [End Page 27]
What the family may not have understood was that, while Mildred had gone off to become a widely-acclaimed writer, she still carried the hopes and dreams, the tragedies and hard life of her family in the Dover community deep inside her. In The Hawk's Done Gone, I believe Mildred spilled a lot of the Haun family history. I know what literary experts say. Only the granny woman was modeled after a real person. In the pages of the book, though, I stumble across people who remind me of long-deceased kin, old family friends my grandmother mentioned and a few not-so-stable people from our family's past. Perhaps that's why the book wasn't mentioned much in family visits.
My grandmother forbade my mom to read The Hawk's Done Gone for many years. My mom was married and out of the house before she read it. The reason had nothing to do with the dark content or the family connection. Instead, my grandmother frowned on the foul language and didn't want my mom to pick it up.
I wish Mildred could come back and visit the female descendants of the Haun family now. Like her, many of us are childless and a lot are single. Almost all of us have active careers. I hope she would be proud of some of the changes we've made. We've stood up to some weird old men. We've placed a value on education for women in the family. Unfortunately, the family has drifted apart, a process that began with my grandmother's generation. We see each other at funerals now.
My mom seemed to experience her own enlightenment after her family moved from Dover to a small town. She married, got a job, and even became active in a labor union. When she left the farm, for the most part, she left part of the Haun legacy behind her.
Don't misunderstand me. She was very proud to be Josephine's daughter and to be a Haun. She just refused to hear any of the superstitions I would bring home after visits with my grandmother. If a bird flies near you, it doesn't mean you're going to die. It just means the bird can't fly straight.
Ironically, I now live in Dover in a subdivision developed on what was my great grandparents' farm. As I've gone through life though, I've discovered some wisdom in the old ways. Deaths do seem to come in threes. Some places in Dover I would never go after midnight. Rock candy and whiskey are the only cures for a chronic cough.
And, just in case, I never tell my dreams before breakfast. [End Page 28]
Debra Williams serves as a public information officer at Walters State College in Morristown, Tennessee. Her monthly column, "On Your Own," appears in Army Times, Marine Times, Navy Times and Air Force Times. She lives within a stone's throw of the settings for most of the stories included in Mildred Haun's The Hawk's Done Gone.
