Mother and Jim, my stepfather
Two photos of my mother have not turned up since my last move. I wish I could show them to you.
In one, she is 13 years old. Her legs are bare, she wears run-down loafers, a simple print house dress that was clearly handed down from someone who was not 5′6″ tall or weighed 100 pounds, as she does. But her dark hair is shiny and pincurl fluffy and her smile is radiant. Her name is Mary Katheryn but people call her Kit, sometimes Kitten. She looks 19. If I had to cast her part in a movie made at that moment in time, a very young Elizabeth Taylor would be perfect.
In the other photo, she is 20 years old. She stands on an old-fashioned ferry, the river behind her. She wears a beautiful print dress with a wide sailor collar and a belt at her slim waist — a perfect fit for someone who is 5′6″ and 105 pounds. Her dark hair is shiny and pincurl fluffy and her smile is radiant. Liz Taylor still has the part. It is her wedding day and her new husband calls her Kathy. They are taking the Warrior River Ferry from rural Walker County to Birmingham, the big city.
I don’t know if mother was ever that radiant again. The man who took the photo of his young bride on the Warrior River Ferry would not make life easy for any of us. A little over a year later, I was born and four years after that, my sister was born. My sister would have a physical disability, for which my mother blamed herself until the day she died. Still, the people who remember her remember all the ways she made their lives better, with her kindness and her smile and her big heart and her cornbread. She would remarry a man who adored her. She would be a good stepmother and a loyal friend. Little pieces of her life sit on shelves and countertops throughout my house, and rest inside people throughout the South who knew her and loved her.
(You’ll find a poem about the wedding day photo on the page Squeezing Life Out of Dust.)
love this Peg. beautiful writing describing a beautiful woman who bore a beautiful woman…seems her life had a theme…
thanks for sharing it.
I called her Katheryn, but that didn’t feel right at times, because this lady took me in as her own, with no questions asked. She did make a mark on mine and my wife’s lives, and is missed daily.