I am the second of seven girls.  I have two older brothers and one younger brother.  We grew up in a time of great hardship.  My parents loved one another and us.  We played together.  We went to a Baptist church together.  We talked to one another.  We yelled at one another.  We fought one another.  We worked together.  Some how we all managed to grow up or reach adulthood without judging one another.  We trusted each other to look out for us.  We trusted ourselves to protect each other even if it meant fighting bigger people.

            I got married when I was 18 years old and left the nest.  None of us were told, “You make your bed, you lie in it”.  None of us were told that if you do this or don’t do that you’re not a member of this family;  because we were.  We were a part of the whole and nothing we did would ever change that.  I moved away and away and away.  But no matter where to or how often, I knew I was still a part of the whole. 

           I managed to go home at least once a year no matter where I lived.  Sometimes more than once a year.  Various members of the family came to visit me.  So forty years passed like this.  I’d kept in pretty close contact but none of us really knew what the other was like because, for one thing, we had never imagined ourselves walking the others’ shoes.  We thought we knew we were all good Christian people who would harm no one. We thought we knew we loved one another.  Then came the year of 1972.  

           Our Father had died from a heart attack in 1940.  Now Mama was sick.  Mama was a good person.  She taught us to have something, you first had to give it away.  She was talking mainly about love, but she also meant other things.  If she had two tomatoes on the vine and someone came by she gave one away thereby increasing her yield.  But like begets like and if you give hate or angry words you get those same things back.  She was not exactly one to turn the other cheek.  If you slapped her she just might slap you back.  She might say cuss words.  Did say them.  But she also talked to her flowers.  They lifted their heads after she’s spoken to them.  She talked to God and she listened and He talked back.  She couldn’t make a pickle worth a darn but if she had two jars she’d give one to someone who passed by. 

             Five long months it took her to die. She was one who always wanted to be the one handing the glass of water, cleaning dirty beds, or whatever it took to take care of those who can’t take care of themselves.

            All the girls in the family had families and worked.  Since Thaniel had died in 1968 I had no one so I left home for almost five months and stayed with Mama every single day - at home or in the hospital.  Evelyn lived in Arkansas, Nora in Mississippi.  They couldn’t stay but made that long drive almost every weekend.  I stayed in the hospital at night and a few days.  Evelyn and Nora stayed nights when they came.  We never left her.  Vollie, Addie B., and  all the girls who could, sat.

             But I got side tracked.  The thing I meant to say was that I became acquainted with my adult siblings again and I found out that’s what we were, a solid block - with our individual families, a solid block -  A lot of good Christian people.

Louise Weir Frasier
January 1, 1992