Sisters, Sisters

I journeyed back for a short, sweet visit to my sister in Alabama last week. It was lovely to spend time with my family down there, especially with one of our South Carolina cousins who’d come to stay as well.  In between cooking, talking, and eating, we took some time to clear through a few rooms of my sister’s house.

Sweet Home.

She sent me home with, among numerous other things: our Aunt Sadie’s sewing machine, our grandfather’s cross-cut saw, our grandmother’s rocking chair, our old family ice cream freezer, our father’s Coleman ice chest, some cuttings from a white wisteria I’ve long admired in her front yard, and a brick. Just the one brick. 

Spring comes softly and sweetly that             far south. At least it does most years. So one delicious morning, we decided to drive into the country to the first community I remember as home. Despite the cheerful baby blue sky, sad changes soon became evident. Only last spring, which was far less soft and sweet than this one, storms raged over the area, bringing tornadoes.

It looked as though someone had let slip the dogs of war.  Trees were blasted. Large, old ones-- far too many to count.  Houses were gone, just gone. The double punch of the recession and damage had decided Billy Parker to close his grocery store and garage after what must have been forty years of business in the community. It stood padlocked. Empty. Lifeless.

 At the top of the rise where my childhood church once stood there was, now, just the top of the rise. It was a sobering drive. 

 So we looked for and found a few places that were still as we remembered them, and we remembered them together.  After awhile, we started to re-remember the places that weren't there anymore as well, along with the people and happenings that made them worth recalling.

Black Walnut is a great favorite.

I would have taken a picture
of the whole cake, but it was gone before I could.

Then my sister took us back to her house and baked us a pound cake.  It was delicious.  She makes wonderful pound cakes.  And she gives me her recipes.  She's a very generous woman, my sister.

And so was my other sister, as well.  Among other things, she taught my nine-year-old self how to crochet.  That must have taken patience and sacrifice.

And that one brick?  My nephew picked it up from the remaining rubble of the church mentioned above, the one that mostly blew off the rise.  This would be the nephew who is the only child of the sister who taught me how to crochet when I was a nine, back before she died at the same age my youngest child is now.

L-R: Leann, Brenda, Joan

You, know, I think Thomas Wolfe had a point. You can’t go home again.  At least not to the same home you left.  But I have to wonder if he’d have written that book differently, or at all, if he’d had sisters to help ease his heartache with laughter and pound cake and bricks.

Benefited greatly from being the youngest child.

I hope you spend some time with someone you love today.  Thanks for visiting. Come again soon.  

Kept everybody's toys.

Leann

. . . and you can stay as long as you like . . .