Reflections Of An Unhappy Mother

This is a departure of what I have been doing. But seemed something I needed to say,

Hazel was the same age as my mother.  She was a distant (or not so distant) cousin. The convoluted intermarriage of families in our ancestral rural Appalachian community left its wake of undecipherable connections. So Hazel was some sort of cousin.

But Hazel is not my topic. Except for the encounter I had with her. The last time I saw Hazel she was old. My mother, nearly the same age, was dead.

My sister and I sat in Hazel's cluttered living room, listening to her accounts of her life and by extension our mother's life. "Your mother worked in the fields like a man," she told us. "She put on overalls and went out just like Luther and Fred (her brothers)."

Just like her brothers. That defined Mommie.  My sisters and I remember her telling us how she wore Uncle Fred's overalls and did the same work he did. We remember her telling us how much better was the life of men.

Mommie was not complaining about the work she did as much as she was bragging.

Her message, but one of her obvious dis-satisfactions with being born a woman seeped into the consciousness of us- her three daughters. We knew well how she felt about being a woman; she never knew how it influenced us.

Had she been born fifty years later; had she been born to money; had many things been different her life might have taken a bold direction. She would have been happy and fulfilled with gender transition.

I Took A Vacation

The time elapsed since my last entry is not without reason. My usual calm sedate life has been filled  with exciting, wonderful and sorrowful  EVENTS.

One of my longest held desires was realized. During with my first Latin class with Miss Black at Cumberland County High School I developed and nourished an ache to see, to stand in, to experience the place where Paris, by choosing the most beautiful goddess, started a war which would lead to the founding of Rome.

This year that ache was alleviated. My daughter, granddaughter and I indulged my fantasy. We went to Turkey.

A wonderful trip.

Followed by my coming home and dealing with the fact that my youngest, who for so many years had lived fifteen miles from me, was moving to Florida.

But those distractions are over. Or at least I hope so. And I shall return to "STUFF WRITTEN DOWN".