As the World Turns

I got the news this morning that one of my cousins is very ill and will probably not make it. Not a good way to start an article or your morning. Then I began to remember back, when we were children and things were simpler. People always say that kids are resilient and that they can deal with trauma better than adults can. I beg to differ. 

Our fathers were brothers. One (mine) was and is an extrovert, charming, and lived life like a big kid. His brother was brooding, introverted, artistic. Opposites. They decided to go into the printing business together, with their shop in downtown Smyrna, behind MawMaw's house. My childhood included many evenings and Saturdays there, playing tag in the yard, running in and out of her house and the shop. The smell of ink and toner still brings a rush of memories. Then there were the cousins. Daddy came from a family of eight kids, who decided to fill the earth themselves, so I had close to 30 cousins on that side. Most of them lived nearby, so visiting my grandparents always meant lots of playmates. We played in the sketchy creek that ran by her house. Sometimes we would dam it up and make a swimming hole. I remember MawMaw pitching a fit when we did that one time. We were covered in thick mud and she had to wash all our stinky, nasty clothes. There were adventures of walking on the railroad tracks next door, scrounging for Coke bottles all over Smyrna to redeem for nickels at the store, eating sour crabapples dipped in baking soda and salt (to make them foam up in your mouth). She had a giant persimmon tree in her backyard. That taste, that plummy, sweet burst of summer on the tongue was a wonderful surprise. Everything in her world was chaos. I don't think I ever walked across her floor that it wasn't sticky, even though she was always mopping. Her sink was eternally full of cold, greasy, dirty water. She preferred to be outside, planting something. She could put a stick in the ground and it would grow. There would be a little triangle of dirt she had scratched up next to the house. Huge stalks of corn and giant tomato plants would emerge, larger than life to me. She loved people and loved life.

My uncle's kids were my compatriots, in my mind. We got gleefully filthy together on many a Saturday. Little did I know of the trials those children endured, with both parents being alcoholics. Where my siblings and I's nights were spent with a bath, prayers and then a clean bed, warm and safe, these cousins lived in filth, squalor and urine-soaked sheets. I remember their Mama who was always squirreled up in a chair in a corner of the kitchen, tiny and bird-like, with a Pepsi-Cola and a cigarette, on the phone. Until I was older, I was envious of their freedom. They could come and go as they pleased and do anything they wanted, whereas my Mama was vigilant. We were never allowed to run inside a neighbor's house without letting her know where we were. Time and the world wore on my cousins as they fell into troubles and more trouble. Eventually, they all found some form of stability -- jobs, spouses, children -- but I am certain that they went through many storms that I know nothing of. Thankfully, the one who is at death's door today seems to have found peace with God along the way. I pray that her passing will be easy and that the burdens of this life will flutter off like gossamer wings.