Mother's Day

This is my Mom when she was in high school. Obviously, I wasn't yet here. I had not seen this photo before my recent trip home last month. My dad had it on his dresser and I made a copy of it. Mom is standing on the two-track that ran down from the highway to her home. The scene is familiar to me as it wasn’t much different when I came along. My granddaddy was a tobacco farmer, but his tobacco was raised on land across the highway. The sandy fields on either side of the two-track path running from the highway to their house were mostly used for vegetables. The fields haven’t been cultivated since the ’66, when my maternal granddaddy died. Nobody has lived in that house since my grandmother’s death in ‘75, just a few weeks after I graduated from high school. You can no longer drive down to the house as it’s all grown up. There are mature trees in the fields and part of the house has fallen in. My mom never talked much about her childhood or growing up. Much of what I know about it, I have learned from her older sister, who has over the past few years shared with me some stories, some of which I have posted here.

-

I need to call my Mom and wish her happy Mother’s Day, but she won’t understand or know who I am and I’ll mostly talk to my Dad. It’s been five years since she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and I miss her terribly.