Mother’s Day is a time for celebrating, or remembering. Today, I’m remembering. We never had much, on our small Tennessee farm, tucked away in almost Alabama. But the crepe paper dress is a reminder that there was no needle my mother would not try to thread for me. The second grade school play was coming up, and I was cast as Little Bo-Peep. Excited as I was to have the part, I am sure now that when my mother read the note from school, what I saw in her eyes was worry. Worry that we couldn’t afford the material to make the costume. No velvet. No satin. Not even cotton for a dress I’d wear just once. But after a while, we went to town and bought crepe paper. My mother made all of my clothes. Homemade was the best she could afford. She’d see a dress in the Sears catalog or in a store window in Florence, Alabama, and say, “I can make it.” From school clothes to formals, my mother had a gift for making something out of nothing. I was much older before I understood what a lux
A memory: Early morning, fire crackling in the wood stove, first light leaning toward us as Mama rocks me, back and forth. I’m in footed pajamas. Thanksgivings will come and go, but this one, the first I can recall, this one has carved itself into me. I’m the baby, too young to know grateful, but I know home, family, love. Smell of scrambled eggs, bacon, biscuits and gravy thick in the air. My brother gets his breakfast on a tray because he has rheumatic fever. Five years, my whole life, he’s been sick. I jump on his bed, and the tray rattles. He grabs his glass of milk and laughs. Always happy, my sick brother, with dimples like mine. I see it all, still. My older brother, home from college, goes squirrel hunting with Daddy. They head toward the woods in their funny caps with flaps over their ears. My sister, home from nursing school, dresses me in pink corduroy overalls. Mama makes an apple pie. The long curly peels drop int