I had a visit with my aunts yesterday. My mind is flooded with memories. I don’t have clear 8mm movie memories. I have Polariod memories. Fuzzy snapshots of moments in time.  I am sitting in the back yard of the house I grew up in.  It was a field of corn plowed by my Daddy once upon a time.

I asked again about the table. My grandmother, Arie Eola Brown Hamm, had my grandfather, Charley Richard Hamm, build her a table large enough so that even me and John Bullet could sit with the family for dinner.

She loved for everyone to dress up for Christmas dinner. I have a photo of my gorgeous father in a suit and tie for one Christmas.  How beautiful life was then.

My mother recounted a note that Granny Arie was disappointed when Mother gave Daddy work clothes for Christmas instead of dress clothes.  Perhaps that is the complete synopsis of my completely ambiguous mind.

My beloved LuLu and I are planning on a 20/20 Vision for 2020.

I know what dreams Rock and I are having. We have a vision for the future. We are ready to step out into a new life together. He will understand when he reads this.  My focus and understanding of a particular part of my “style” has become clear only after our new dream appeared. And that new dream only appeared when I surrendered.  To Him, to Rock, and to the Future. And also surrendered the past.

Mama isn’t ever coming home.  I can stop waiting for her to return.

**wrote the above a while back. Don’t know why I didn’t post it.

But, today, I cried. After all this time, LuLu and I got around to a conversation that revealed she knew my Mama from working at the hospital.  This conversation came about in a winding way as conversations do between two women who love each other like we do. She is my sister. In spirit rather than flesh. May I say amid all the current conflict that our skin tones are different and we have never cared one whit about the difference. But, I cried today just discovering that my sister knew my Mother. So, Mama does still come home sometimes.