Yesterday, I was having a REALLY bad day. Class lessons, manuscript deadline, and emails piled up; a local reporter needed a photo (preferrably with cows!) for an article she was writing about my Highlights’ win, and household tension mixed with a skull-cracking headache.
Around noon something soft bumped against my front door. A package! Inside was a note from my dearest aunt, a pair of deep blue pajamas covered in stars and moons, and a Flicka DVD. All my hard edges softened. In the card, my aunt related a story about my grandmother polishing her waitress shoes so they’d look good on the outside. Then Grandma stuck cardboard in the bottoms to cover the holes and headed off to work.
My grandmother’s flame burned bright. My aunt pointed out that I am that woman’s granddaughter. And my amazing aunt is her youngest daughter. Grandma had ten children, nine that survived. She raised them during the depression on a diner waitress salary. Her husband, when he came home, was a violent alcoholic. My grandmother escaped him and remained single for many years until she met R.C., the man my cousins and I knew as our grandfather.
R.C. and Grandma settled in a house he built on his farm in Bushnell, Florida. Tucked into an oak hammock behind their new home, was R.C.’s cracker homestead. My family lived in that old house for a year when I was twelve and that seeded the story that won me the Highlights’ contest. Yes, I am my grandmother’s granddaughter. She inspires me still and so does her daughter.
