Beana_5

Dear Spiral Notebook

I've had a little hurtin' in my heart with the writing about Miss Ola.  Not so much about her,  because goodness, she's been dead more years than I can remember now, but more in the way of realizing that I once was a little girl.  I had forgotten the little bitty things like being able to just flop down on a floor if I felt like it, or jump off a small porch without ever worrying about my old legs breaking.  Ya know, we didn't bath that much back then and it weren't odd.  Saturdays was bath time and believe me, if you were the youngest you were bathed in a wash bucket of cold dirty water.  I can remember Mama putting a dab of vanilla extract behind each of my ears so I'd smell good for church.  I don't know if that was just done in east Texas but  that weren't odd either.  My own remaining children are in their 50's and 60's now and two of them drank vanilla extract once they got the alcoholism sickness.  I reckon I'll get to all that.

We had secrets back then.  They was family secrets.  Secrets from neighbors and secrets inside the family.  Some secrets was known by every family member which means I guess that it weren't really a secret but if you never say it out loud is it still a secret?  It's like when Daddy would come home real happy for awhile even though everyone in the house knew he was drunk but acts like he's just happy, well that's like a secret that each person thinks they are keeping.  Enough.  I gotta finish my memories about Miss Ola but I'm spent out at the moment.