Tissue Issue

When my husband's mother passed away several years ago, he and his sister were still working at jobs and their time was limited. I had already retired, so I took on the duty of emptying his mom's kitchen cabinets, dresser drawers, closets and anything else that needed to be emptied.

        I spent several days alone in my mother-in-law's house, mostly in her bedroom, sifting through everything from nightgowns to slips to pantyhose to make-up and jewelry. From the closet, I pulled out familiar sweaters, jackets, trousers, and like-new dresses. As I continued performing this tearful task, a pattern began to emerge.

Matchsticks

     When my oldest brother Charles, the firstborn of our family, was a little boy, he went with our parents to visit Daddy's first cousin, Thurman, the brother of James. I only mention James because he used to come see us and I remember him, but I have no recollection of Thurman.

    They were sons of Uncle Martin, the brother of my paternal Grandmother; more relatives of my past whom I do not remember, which has nothing to do with this story except for explaining the familial trail and letting the reader know that most of these people, although in my ancestry, are figments of my imagination.

Kickback

     I couldn't have been more than seven or eight years old, nine at the most. We were living on a sharecropper tobacco farm in North Carolina. Mother told me to get some eggs from the chicken house, so I walked across the yard to the barns, then stopped cold in my tracks at the sight of a copperhead snake draped across one of the logs at the base of the hen house. When I could move my legs again, I turned and ran back to the house.

    Mother called my brother Charles from his bed and the next thing I know, I'm standing some yards from the chicken house; Charles is kneeling with his arms around me from behind helping me to hold his .22 rifle. I do not remember pulling the trigger, but I do remember the kickback.

   After that we probably gathered the eggs and went back to the house to eat some scrambled ones. To my best recollection, that is the first and last time I ever shot a gun.