 |
| The Parrish sisters: L-R, Back to front:Edna, Ruby, Ruth, Mary, Mae, Becky, Afton |
When you're a kid there really is never a time when you're not learning something. For good or for bad, kids are sponges.
One of the dandy benefits of writing every day, and running out of things you think you want to say, is that little non-descript moments start to bubble up in your brain, and they gain prominence by default.
Since last week when Aunt Becky started her journey Home, she has been much on my mind. Her presence there has uncovered many tiny snips of memory, and in the process has cinched the ties that bind me to her. I can see the value in God telling us to pray always. It keeps our relationship with him prominent in our brains, the way Aunt Becky holds a place of prominence right now because I am constantly thinking about her and my relationship with her.
I first loved my mother's younger sister because I knew my mother loved her.
I have always felt a deep sadness that my mom and her little sister lost their mom when they were young. Becky was 9 years old. Mom was 14. That whole family not only lost their mom, but it felt like they also lost their dad. Not long after Lizzy died, George remarried. His bride was young, I believe she was about the age of his older kids. She already had children. Becky and mom shifted between living with various brothers and sisters who were married at the time. The whole picture makes me sad. But I can see, all these years later, a treasure that emerged from that sadness. My mom and her siblings turned to each other, out of emotional necessity. My Uncle Parks brought my mother in to live with him and his wife until she was old enough to marry and have a place of her own.
 |
| My mother's family, not long before her mother died. Mom is on the front row far right. Becky is in the middle. |
When one of my daughters has a heartache or a struggle, they pick up the phone and call me. This keeps my mother-heart warm and soft and pliable. And it keeps our relationship the same. That same heart-spot, for my mom and her sisters, was filled instead by each other.
I have a distinct memory of lying on a pile of laundry in the basement of Aunt Becky's house. It was cool down there, and it smelled like laundry detergent and fabric softener and starch mixed with damp cement. I remember lying there, my little-girl knees curled up toward my chest in the coolness and the softness, drifting off in a summer afternoon nap to the music of my mother and her sister's conversation as they sorted and washed and folded. The push and the pull of their voices were like a choral call and response. I'd hear them hush to a whisper when matters became serious and private. I'd hear laughter shaking me from my semi-slumber. They stitched their lives together with words. I learned, in that place where we do not realize we are learning, how sister-stitching is done.
When we returned to Pittsburgh there were late nights, when long-distance rates were cheaper, when I could hear my mother talking on the telephone through the thin walls of our apartment. I could tell by the tone of her voice that she was talking to one of her sisters. The sound made me feel safe, and calm, and I went to sleep peacefully to that love-song only sisters can sing to each other.
Because I am older now, and there are long strands of silence in my daily life, I pause now and again to listen. I think... and maybe this is my imagination...maybe not...that I can hear in almost indiscernible tones, a heavenly chorus of laughter somewhere in the distance.
My own sisters and I have learned this language. Even our brothers know it. Its a dialect of the larger language of Love.
Yes. I’ve come to know we are “the lucky ones “ to have this type of relationship with each other. Forever grateful!!
ReplyDelete