World Beginnings

The second week of the COVID quarantine meanders like a weed through our gardens. They are choking the breath. Here life is lived outside, yet this insidious weed has chased the retirees from the Plaza and the Malecon. Young men no longer gather on steps drinking cold beer and wafting marijuana. Every morning I enjoyed my coffee watching the hustling and bustling on the street below me as parents walked young children to school and women did their daily shopping. Now the street is eerily empty. Schools are vacant and businesses shuttered. Occasionally a woman will go the tienda next door and come back with a quart of milk or orange juice. This morning as I drank coffee and planned my day, laughter erupted at the house next door. Uproarious, deep belly laughter from the men and high pitched shrieks from women and children. The sound died down and then bellowed out again. Suddenly I was back with my Aunt Janis, Uncle Forrest, Aunt Annie Mae and Uncle Jim telling stories that bro...

Bobbie Morgan Livingston was my first cousin and one of my few idols.  My father died when I was ten and we moved from Seattle to a small town of 300 in Mississippi. I was an angry, defiant child in every way and when I was upset I ran away. My dad’s family was a lifesaver for my mother and her five unruly children; there was always room at their tables and hearts. In those days it didn’t take much to set me off running down the farm roads trying to reach the woods to escape the pain. Bobbie’s mom, my Aunt Annie Mae, would call to her to “go catch her and bring her back!” Bobbie and I both were married numerous times, ok, more than two and less than five, which provided endless gossip and speculation at family gatherings. We used to joke that we would put the names and dates of our marriages on the back of our tombstones so that everyone could keep it straight. At the yearly Memorial Service at the family cemetery, we would sit together and we could see distant relatives...