I wanted to re-invent myself into someone other than a small town country girl. I wanted to be somebody else. I didn't want to take anything of my old life with me, how childish I was in my thinking, but that's how you feel when you're seventeen.
I was raised on a little farm in Pineville Georgia. I and my sisters shared a small five room farmhouse with mama and daddy. My daddy had inherited the fifty acres from his father back in the 50s and even built the house we lived in himself.
My two older sisters Elmira (Mira) and Martha Ann had already gone off to a little college in south Georgia. Mira had one more semester to go and would graduate in December. Martha Ann was at the same college, but they acted like they never saw each other while they were there.
I always thought this information, that Mira was her sister, was something Martha Ann didn't want her classmates to know. I didn't know for sure who was embarrassed by whom, but I had my guess. They were both home for summer break.
We were all two years apart in birth, except Lin. My daddy always said I was his baby and it took me years and some maturity to understand that the six year difference in age between me and Lin was something that was quite accidental.
Daddy was a farmer by choice in the daytime, but he also worked at the aluminum mill on the graveyard shift.
Mama, who was ten years younger than daddy, worked in a small textile factory that made women and girls clothes.
They had married when mama was twenty and daddy was thirty. Daddy would laugh and say, "When I first saw that tall yella gal I knew I was gonna marry her, even though she weren't but fifteen at the time."
Daddy had served in the Air force and come back home to marry mama when she was old enough. I often thought, boy, he must have wanted to marry her pretty badly to wait so long – something like five years . . . and her likewise. That must have been some kind of love or there must have been even fewer people you could marry back then who weren't related to you.
We lived way out in the woods down a gravel and dirt road. Our nearest neighbor was a mile away. We didn't have other kids to play with except at school. We had to be best friends with each other or sometimes our numerous cousins when we got a chance.
Being good country girls we all learned how to sew from the home-ed classes at school and our mama at home. Mama was and is an excellent seamstress and quilt maker. We had an old Singer sewing machine that folded down under the top and left you with a desk on top. When we weren't sewing, we used the sewing machine as a desk to study on. Yes, it was crowded into that small bedroom as well.
As a little girl, I would wander in the woods for hours, just walking around pretending to be a character out of some book I had read. My favorite spot was down in the pasture where the old mule used to graze . . . back up in the pine trees a way.
There was a clearing where a tree had fallen over and left an old stump. I would sit down on that stump and talk out loud.
I loved to be the misunderstood heroine who saves the day. I secretly thought of myself that way. Of course, I had special powers. I would show up in the end, after everyone had doubted me and save all my so-called friends and family. I would never tell anyone how I knew but would just let them wonder how I did it. What a gift from God!
My daddy said I had the gift of sight. He told me over and over how I would be able to see the future. Like yeah, right!
I remember getting plenty of whippings for being in the woods too long and not gathering eggs or washing dishes or whatever it was I was supposed to do instead of what I was doing. Since my imagination was so heightened, I sometimes had trouble discerning reality from my dreams or visions. Did I imagine it, dream it, or really lived it in some other time and place.
In a lot of ways the summer of 1976 was the longest summer of my life. I couldn't wait for it to end, because I believed soon I would be living the life I read about in my books and seeing for real, things I only dreamed about.
I would learn so many things in college. I couldn't wait to go to a real university library. I longed to meet all the new friends I would make . . . especially boyfriends. The first thing though, I had to make it to September.
Mira and Martha Ann were home for the summer. They already had a taste of being 'grown.’ Mira was to graduate in December with a degree in education. Mama and daddy thought she was going to be a teacher. The rest of us knew better.
Mira was the beautiful sister. She was gorgeous and she knew it. Elmira had thick reddish curly hair always styled just right, milk chocolate colored skin and a body that gave 36-24-36 pause. She was one of those girls that in high school would make all the other girls hold on tightly to their boyfriends when she walked by, because she could look at them and get them, just that quickly.
I, on the other hand was one of those girls that people snickered about behind their hands. I always had a problem with my hair, it was thick and curly like Elmira's, but I couldn't do anything with it. It stuck
