She's been thin and heavy. I've seen her crawl out of bed with arthritis. I've seen her cry like the world was ending. I've heard her laugh like laughing was enough to make the difference. I've seen her crazy and sane. It's a slight shading of difference.
Those hands have shelled field peas. Threaded needles. Washed collards. Held hymnals. Spanked me. Praised our Lord.
She grew up rough. A sharecropper's daughter. A farm of tobacco, rice, cotton, corn, pigs, cows, survival. Oil lamps. Books, once every two weeks from a library in a spot of a town up a dusty road in southeastern North Carolina.
She traveled. Lived in Japan, Italy, England, Spain. Taught me how to read. Taught me to respect -- everyone, not just the Governor and the preacher, but that man picking up the trash, that man who could be you.
She grew up in the church. The grand-daughter of a Baptist preacher. His face is now in a tiny photo on a tombstone in a weedy graveyard next to a church he preached at. In Bladen County. He was famous in that time, long ago. A way with words and telling the revealed truth.
She is South. Her great-grandfather and great-uncle signed up and fought in Antietam, Gettysburg and surrendered with Lee at Appamatox. Signed a book saying they would never raise arms against the Union, again. The story left from them was of hard times, dead men and hatred for the North.
She held me. My sister. My brother. She loved us. She's old-fashioned. Hard. And sweet. My mother.
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