I am from guitars, from Jello instant pudding and a yellow kitchen.
I am from the old adobe house at the lower end of Petra Lane...brown, rounded, cool to the touch.
I am from the apple trees, lilacs and rocks; the alfalfa, irises and sunsets.
I am from singing and talking, from Mary Lou Hathcock and Yates and Adams.
I am from the planting and the sharing.
From "We love you" and "Get your nose out of that book."
I am from hymn singing and no bad-words, from "women don't cut their hair," and "only savages poke holes in their bodies."
I'm from Texas and Texans (though I was by some fluke born in Georgia), from biscuits and gravy.
From the cotton picker's daughter who cared for her younger brothers in the shade of the wagon, the fried potatoes taken to school for lunch, and the fifteen year old Rotan boy who went to San Francisco to work in the shipyards early in WWII, and rode his motorcycle home to get his parents' signatures, to enlist at seventeen.
I am from cigar boxes and shoeboxes of saved papers with images of faces and words remembered and forgotten.
Okay. that was depressing.
It's not where I am now!
5 comments:
I really enjoyed this one. It's a really neat way to picture where you are from. I did one too!
It is sad that you were told to get your nose out of the book. We had walls of books and I was able to always buy as many as I wanted and read them over and over again. I wish I could give that to the younger you.
This was poignant. I'm glad that you have traveled so far from there.
Fascinating. I really like this so I did it.
So evocative. I really enjoyed reading this. Jello instant pudding and fried potatoes, yes! And the adobe cool to the touch. Lovely.
I wrote one myself a couple of years ago, and after I posted it on my blog with a little hint, my dad wrote one too. And that took my breath away, because there was a lot there that I didn't know. At the end he wrote,
"I am from a pastor’s living room
and a couple of inexpensive gold bands
on the hands of two kids going…somewhere…
we didn’t know where,
but by God we were (and still are)
going there together."
I was the baby-on-the-way that brought them to that pastor's living room, so I'm really glad I got to read that. :)
My then-11yo daughter wrote one, too, and that choked me up as well, seeing what stood out for her in the simple unfolding of our days.
Here's mine.
my daughter's
my dad's
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