We listened while the women talked
That’s me in the foreground at the left and my sister’s head in the right foreground. Marquetta (Aunt Katherine’s daughter-in-law in the white dress) is at the back standing beside my great-grandmother Narcie Smith in sunglasses. Elsie Brown, Narcie’s best friend, sits in a blue polyester dress that would later go into an all polyester quilt which I now look after. Elsie Brown walked more than any person I’ve ever known. She wore orthopedic shoes which I stared at as I listened under the kitchen table while the women talked. As I sit looking out my window at a leaden Lancashire sky, Mawmaw’s house in Appalachia can seem very far away. The houses here, like many in Britain, are made of a grey and brown stone which matches the sky. Cold rain streams down my window. Just half a mile from my house, there’s the River Keer which flows into the Kent Estuary and Morecambe Bay. Along the river, I can see marsh-grazing sheep and cows, lambs jumping straight up into the air just like they do, a