As families go, I have the best. I couldn't have chosen better parents, better siblings, better aunts and uncles, better grandparents. God knew what he was doing when he placed me in this family.
Today I was reminded of why I am who I am right now. I had a long conversation with my Aunt in Arkansas this morning that grounded me. After asking how the family was doing, she shared with me that she was writing her memoirs, which had me all excited and wanting to know what she would say.
She shared with me many stories about growing up in Little Plymouth, Virginia, a small hamlet southeast of Richmond and was reminscent of the values she learned while in that community. She talked about her departure from her 1st college, after being there one year, and her move to Arkansas without telling her parents, them waiting at home for her to come home from a semester at college. She talked about giving birth alone and how she went to sleep and woke up in the dark, thinking she had died and gone to heaven. When she opened her eyes in the pitch dark, she said "Well God, I'm here." Then upon hearing someone else in the room added, "and I guess I'm not alone." And how she really had no idea that she in fact HAD NOT died from the intense pain of childbirth, but had made it alive.
She recounted the friends she made when she first got to Arkansas, mostly elderly ladies who took her under their wings and guided her through her first child (and the remaining 5 to come), her marriage, life in general and how invaluable they'd become to her. Several of them have passed away and she expressed how deeply she missed them.
She then went into stories about her toe that had been broken 7 years ago that protrudes, giving kids something to point at and tug on their mother's dresses about, the mood swings she's experiencing going through menopause and how walking for miles helps her relieve all the "extra energy" she has to expend by way of snappy remarks and anger, but how her broken toe sometimes tries to get in the way of her stress relieving activity.
After about 45 minutes of non-stop laughter, tears pouring down my face, I had to get back to some semblance of a normal work day (although I continued working through our conversation). While hanging up the phone, I couldn't help but be excited about the day those memoirs are in my hand and I'm enjoying her stories on the front porch, drinking some sweet tea, on a cool summer evening.
No comments:
Post a Comment