Where I'm From

I am from cast iron skillets, from Mother’s Oats, biscuits and gravy, grape Kool-aid, and sweet tea.

I am from a house so small almost anyone could reach up and touch the ceiling and from water drawn with a bucket from a well. I am from wringer washing machines and clotheslines and chickens scratching in the yard.

I am from pine trees, red ants, and red bugs (known in other places as chiggers). I am from blackberries picked along red dirt roads and from daffodils that sprang back to life every spring. I’m from sweet gum trees with rope swings and from lightening bugs in mason jars.

I am from big Sunday dinners and from short, round, country folk and from bald-headed men, from Skeltons and Chapmans and Zacharys and Lees, from Dotsie and Charlie and Jewel and Boaster.

I am from hard-working men, from mechanics and farmers, and from women who cooked from scratch and “put up” for winter. I am from sisters who sang hymns while we did the dishes at night and from a maiden aunt who saved her nurse’s wages to send her nephews to college.

From Hank-n-Scratch, "be home before dark," and “that’s with the bark on it” (which I still don’t understand). From women who talked as they shelled peas on the porch. I am from bedtime stories told by a loving Granny, from Goldilocks and the Three Bears, The Three Little Pigs and  The Three Billy Goats Gruff.

I am from Baptists who walked to church on Wednesday nights and twice on Sundays and who said grace before meals. I’m from hellfire and brimstone preachers and from The Old Rugged Cross and Bringing in the Sheaves.

I am from the South, from Texas, from Bryans Mill, Texarkana, and Corpus Christi. I am from oatmeal cookies, watermelon rind preserves, purple-hulled peas, and snow ice cream.

From soldiers, Confederate and American, from heroes decorated with Purple Hearts, from men who were in the first wave on the beaches of Normandy and men who commanded tanks under General Patton and men who stalked the jungles of Vietnam. I am from wives and mothers who served by waiting and by keeping the home fires burning and by doing whatever they had to do to keep body and soul together.

I am from a tattered box of jumbled sepia-tones, black-and-whites, and faded color photos kept on a shelf in Mama’s closet and only opened with permission at the dining room table with everyone gathered around to carefully pass our family’s memories from hand to hand while we learned where we came from.

I am from a long line of love.

**********

This is a writing prompt from Mama Kat's Writer's Pretty Much World Famous Workshop. I must say this template, which is titled "Where I'm From," is one of my all-time favorites. It's a great exercise. I recommend you click over to here, copy it, and do the prompt yourself, even if you don't blog. It's a great exercise.