Tag: legacy writing

Legacy Writing 365:113


In this picture, Mother is about thirty-four. She’s sitting near Aunt Drexel while they open Christmas presents. Above the mantel are some watercolors my father painted of German buildings. I still have those, plus some of the things on the table next to Mother: the books, a small green ashtray, the brass coasters.

I love seeing Aunt Drexel unaware that someone’s taking her photo. I love the look of delight on my mother’s face. And it’s impossible not to pair that photo with this one of my sister, who was around the same age my mother was in her photo on the Christmas this was taken in my apartment in north Alabama.


Another painting of my father’s (painted for me, so of course I still have it) is on the wall behind her. She’s opening a ring that Mother brought her from a trip she took with our cousins Alan, Laverne, and Elenore to the Bahamas.

These photos really do make me happy. Although Debby’s eagle eye may spot what looks like hand-wringing happening on the left side of the photo. She’ll know that’s me, and it’ll make her laugh.

Legacy Writing 365:112

It’s a rarity to find a photo of my mother with all her siblings. Though she has several group shots of them–including with their parents–she’s usually not in them, a drawback to being a military wife. It wasn’t until after my mother died that my sister told me that she could remember hearing, as a little girl, my mother cry and cry when she received a call telling her that her father had died, not only at the news, but because my parents didn’t have enough money for her to go home for his funeral. It’s a heartbreak I never remember her talking about.

Though I do know some of the hardships and challenges she and her family faced, that was never what we heard at reunions, like this one sometime in the late 60s/very early 70s.

Back row: Grover, Winnie, Verble, Bernell, Flora, Arliss, Dorothy
Front row: Terry (called Buster), Lamar, Buford (called Boots), John, Gerald

If you think this aging group might have been somewhat staid and–well, elderly–you would be wrong. Together, they reverted to the kids they used to be and would tell stories of growing up that would leave them all hollering with laughter until they had to wipe away tears. Even the sweetest of my aunts and quietest of my uncles had wicked senses of humor. While other kids might run and play, I stuck close to this bunch of storytellers ’cause it’s where the best action was.

As kids, John and Gerald were called Mutt and Jeff after characters in one of the first daily comic strips. By the time I came along, I don’t remember anyone calling Gerald “Jeff” anymore, but they did often still call John “Mutt.” He was apparently among the wildest of the boys, and for a period took to wearing a Tarzan costume, jumping from trees, and wielding a knife.

One afternoon an elderly lady–we’ll call her Miss Elizabeth–came calling on my grandmother. They were sitting in the parlor drinking ice tea and talking, unaware that outside a battle was being waged between Uncle John and one of his brothers. His adversary snuck inside the house and made it to the parlor, hiding behind Miss Elizabeth’s chair without being spotted by the women. John came barreling in with a Tarzan yell, saw his brother, whipped out his knife from his loincloth, and said, “I’m going to KILL you” as he lunged toward Miss Elizabeth.

Over the years in the retelling, Miss Elizabeth’s reaction varied from fainting to hysterics to having to be escorted home by the repentant boys. What never changed was Uncle John’s blatantly false look of remorse as the story came to its dramatic conclusion, and the sly glance of pride he’d send my way.

Legacy Writing 365:111

I think when you know someone almost your entire life, often one “look” of that person stays in your head. Whenever Lynne and I are going through photos of us over the years, I’ll say, “That’s my favorite photo of you!” That photo seems to be ever-changing; however, almost always, her hair will be in braids.

This is a photo from her collection, not mine. (And her version is better, because this is a picture of a picture, not a scan.) She’s sitting on the steps outside the doors leading from her parents’ living room to their back yard, and the dog is Ezra. The photo was taken the end of junior year/summer/beginning of senior year of high school. And she looks like such a hippie.

These days I hear people say “hippie” like it’s a dirty word. And maybe we were naive and idealistic and unrealistic. And yes, possibly high. But there is a soft sweetness to the girl in this photo, and this is who I see when I think “Lynne.”

We grow up. Hopefully we grow wiser and better. But we know there’s a core person within who’s still seven and seventeen and twenty-seven, etc. One beautiful thing about the friends we keep over the decades is that someone may always honor the forever-young person within us.

Legacy Writing 365:110

I’ve glanced at this photo from my mother’s stash several times without thinking much about it. She wrote on the back:


Irma, Gerald, Mitchell, me

Irma is holding a rake, Gerald is holding an axe, and Mitchell and Mother are holding hoes. They appear to be standing in a field that includes Queen Anne’s Lace, a wildflower that grows wild all over the South. (I don’t know if this is Alabama, Mississippi, or Tennessee, and I have no idea who Irma and Mitchell are.)

When I decided to scan it, I looked at the back again, and the hair on my arms stood up, because I realized she’d also put the date on it: December 7, 1941.

For a while, I doubted her. Would there still be even a smattering of wildflowers that late in the year? And would people be outside in shirtsleeves in December? So I did some research, reading reminiscences of people who were alive and aware of the events on Pearl Harbor Day. Many people were enjoying leisurely afternoons and would only gradually hear the news as they turned on their radios. Winter came late to Mississippi that year, and one woman remembered how the mild weather drew people outdoors.

So I believe my mother’s date, and here’s the story I read from her photo. My mother was fifteen. She was out goofing around with her favorite brother and friends on a Sunday afternoon. None of them knew how their world was about to change, or that within twenty-four hours their country would be at war.

I think that’s a pretty amazing “before” photo to find in my family archives.

Legacy Writing 365:109

April 18 is a crap day in our family history. It’s the day we lost my father. I wasn’t where I was supposed to be that day, but as it happens, I was where I needed to be. Strange how things turn out sometimes.

He wasn’t a perfect man or husband or father. Thank goodness for that, because he was real. He had flaws; sometimes when I see those same flaws in myself, instead of beating myself up about them, I can just appreciate knowing that I’m his daughter.

A man doesn’t have to be perfect to be a good man–or husband and father. What I appreciate most of all was the unshakable love he had for his family: parents, siblings, nieces and nephews. He loved my brother, was proud of him, and was so often tickled by David’s wit. He adored my sister; Debby was his little girl until the day he died. And oh, those grandkids–a constant source of joy for him. He also loved his daughter-in-law and sons-in-law.

Perhaps the greatest gift he gave his children was the way he treated our mother–and expected us to treat her. Of course they had problems, like any couple. Sometimes they really annoyed each other. But it was a love story and remained one even after he died that April day while she sat next to his bed.

I love this photo, though I know nothing of its story.

Daddy’s the one on the right holding a cup in one hand and a beer stein in the other. I’m guessing it’s in Germany–not during the deployment when I was born there, but a later time when we were still in the States. (See edit below.) I love the laughter and look of camaraderie among these men. The guy in the lower left is Don Draper (Mad Men) handsome. I like a time when men who were normally in uniform dressed in suits or sports jackets.

When I first began painting small canvases in 1997, I had no idea why or what to do with them. This is one of the first: a tribute to both a favorite painter, Mark Rothko, and a favorite poet, Emily Dickinson. I can’t count the number of times after my father died that I read this poem and understood it in a way I never had before.

This is the Hour of Lead.

ETA 11/13/12: I love that my brother and sister can fill in blanks for me–another advantage to being the baby! David pointed out that Daddy has all the fingers on his right hand, which means this photo was taken before he lost his little finger to blood poisoning. Since that happened between his German tours, that makes this his first post-war deployment to Germany. David suggested that he was drinking coffee, rather than beer, because he knew he might have to go to the hospital any time. It took me a while to get his meaning: Maybe the photo was taken when my mother was pregnant with me!

Legacy Writing 365:108

Do you have your report cards? I have all of mine except, mysteriously, from third grade. Maybe we moved before I could get it. I think my mother made it easier on me to keep up with that stuff by giving me this book somewhere along the way.

It has pockets for every year, kindergarten through twelfth grades. There are places to put information about the school year: pets, best friends, extra-curricular activities, favorite teachers and classes. For a long time this is where I kept the school pictures other students traded me for mine until one year when I put those in albums. But the report cards are still in there, along with a few little souvenir items from my final years in high school. I recently took out my report cards to look at my grades. They were pretty good except for some bad years in science and math; sadly, most of that was about being boy crazy. I don’t even remember some of my teachers from those years.

For some reason, I turned the report cards over, and year after year, there’s my mother’s signature: either Mrs William D Cochrane or Mrs Wm D Cochrane.

Then in tenth grade, that abruptly stops. There’s a story that signatures don’t tell.


She signed on the wrong line the second six weeks of my sophomore year because I wasn’t in that school the first six weeks. So a little arrow is drawn to show where she should have signed. Thereafter, my father signed. It’d be easy to say that’s because we were in the same school. I just walked the report card down the hall to his office, asked him to sign it, and returned it to my homeroom teacher. But the bigger story is that my mother and I basically didn’t interact that year. I was in full-fledged rebellion, furious at her for making me transfer schools, so we were on a break. She got her first grandchild in early November, a happy distraction for her, and I stayed in my bedroom for nine months. How lucky was my father to be caught between two stubborn, angry females!

By eleventh grade, a truce had been declared. However, I clearly forgot to take my report card to her at the end of the first six weeks.


Because that first “Mrs Wm D Cochrane” is a total forgery of her handwriting by me. I undoubtedly took my report card to my father the second six weeks and said, “I probably shouldn’t let her see that I forged her name last time,” so he signed it. From then on, it was back to her. I’m glad we got along that year, because she suffered a couple of stunning blows when one of her dearest friends died, and shortly after, Uncle Gerald, the brother to whom she was closest, also died. That year I remember going home in the middle of the day for some reason and finding her sobbing in her bedroom. She didn’t tell me why, and I wanted so much to do something. It would be a few years before I realized that sometimes when women are alone we just need to cry and we don’t need anyone to try to fix anything for us.

My senior year, she’s the official report card signer again. I had almost all “A”s that year, so who knows why I forged her signature the fourth six weeks. Maybe she and my father weren’t around. All I know is that I can spot the fake from across the room. I wonder if my teachers knew?

Legacy Writing 365:107

Among the pictures I used for my masthead collage is this one:

James had asked for more information about it. This is when we lived in Columbus, Georgia. I can’t be sure, but I suspect this is the first time my parents bought a house. They’d lived in student housing at Bama, then when they left Tuscaloosa and my father was teaching (and I think being a principal) at a tiny rural school, I can’t imagine they had enough money to buy a house. [ETA: My brother has told me that my parents did buy a house when my father got that first teaching job. The Columbus house is actually the third house they ever bought, because they also owned a house for a few months in Colorado, where Daddy was stationed after I was born and we returned from Germany.]

After my father went back into the Army, they usually lived in quarters or would have known any civilian housing was temporary so it was best to rent. But for whatever reason, between my father’s stints at Fort Benning, when he was deployed in Korea, they not only bought this house in Columbus, they were involved in decisions related to its construction.

This shot really is a slice of American life from that time. Mother’s giving Dopey a bath in the front yard, probably on a Saturday afternoon. She’s looking into the sun, and we see the long shadow of the photographer. My sister thinks the photographer is my brother, and I’m sure she’s correct. Other small ranch houses are visible across the street, a station wagon in one carport. It’s a scene probably taking place in a million front yards across the country, as neighborhoods were springing up to house the exploding baby boom population.

Many of the neighborhood men were overseas. When I read the section of The Women’s Room in which suburban women spent their days sitting in one another’s kitchens or in the yards, as their kids played around them, it was entirely familiar because of Columbus. Very few Army wives had jobs other than being homemakers because, again, military life was transient, and who hires someone knowing she will be leaving in a year? But my mother found a way to make extra money. She approached the developers who were throwing those houses up as fast as they could and contracted to clean them after they were finished but before they were sold. She spent hours scraping stickers off new windows before washing them, as well as removing the other dust and litter of construction. The money wasn’t great, but it helped her afford “extras” like Scouting dues, plenty of gifts under the Christmas tree, the portable swimming pool she put on our patio behind the house. My mother had a hard childhood, and like so many parents of her generation, she wanted to give her children a better life.

Here’s another photo of Dopey and Mother from the back yard of that house. It shows more of her industriousness.

The garden is something I don’t remember at all. Gardening is hard work, but knowing her, I understand how much she must have enjoyed working in the dirt, growing vegetables to supplement our groceries. She loved to cook and knew how to fill a great Southern table. Both my brother and sister inherited her gift for growing things. Though I did not, I do have a keen sense of the good life she and my father provided us–not with material things, but with stability and security and with a sense of pride in and commitment to whatever work we undertake.

Legacy Writing 365:106


Eighth grade. Standing by my mother’s Chevy Malibu before school. The dress I’m wearing is one she made and I loved it–white yoke with long white sleeves; navy A-line with white polka dots.

My father is in Korea. My brother is in Okinawa. My sister is getting married and moving out. Everything is in flux, including the girl in the yellow raincoat.

Have you ever laughed when a child of, say, seven years, says something like, “When I was a little kid…” We forget that even as children, we had an awareness that we would never experience the world as that child again. The seven year old looks wistfully at three. The fourteen year old looks wistfully at seven. “Live in the moment!” we are urged. But I believe that all of our moments and who we were in them stay within us, even when we don’t remember them or we remember them through the lens of adult perceptions. We aren’t looking back; we’re looking in.

In “Yellow Raincoat,” Tim Hanauer sings:

If I only had my yellow raincoat
I’d take a walk in the pouring rain
and I’d look up at the sky
watch the clouds roll by
worries wash away playing in the rain

If I only had my yellow raincoat
I’d sit and watch cartoons, Sunday afternoons
I’d build a blanket fort, put off my book report
watching Sesame Street
pajamas with slipper feet

If I only had my yellow raincoat
I would dance around in the pouring rain
and I’d make ice cream on my bike
any flavor I would like
worries wash away playing in the rain

In the rain…

If I only had my yellow raincoat
I’d ride around on my big wheel
and I’d pretend that I could fly, soar across the sky
always love to play with big wheels in the rain

In the rain…

But it’s getting cold now, it’s raining hard now
too old to play in the pouring rain now
I don’t have my yellow raincoat
and I don’t want to
get wet anymore

Legacy Writing 365:105


Every day, off to school, to learn something new. In that lunch box, ALWAYS, a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a thermos of chocolate milk (made with Nestlé’s Quik–the only way I would drink milk–and I’m still the only one of us who doesn’t like milk).

Then, in the afternoon, on the driveway, I set up school, gathered the neighborhood kids younger than me, and taught them what I’d learned that day.


Their mothers must have loved the free babysitting services.

Later, I received a chalkboard on a stand to help me with my teaching responsibilities. One side had a black surface; the other side had a green surface. A photo of the chalkboard survives, but I forgot to make a copy before I sent it to my nephew after my mother died (she’d taken a picture of a drawing he did on the chalkboard).

Legacy Writing 365:104

“And who shall say–whatever disenchantment follows–that we ever forget magic; or that we can ever betray, on this leaden earth, the apple-tree, the singing, and the gold?”
— Thomas Wolfe, Look Homeward, Angel

One of my favorite teenage memories, and Lynne remembers it, too, comes from a summer day at dusk when a group of us piled into Frank M’s van. We had no plan and no destination. We rode around, and when the urge struck, we stopped and cimbed out of the van to lie on the lawns of strangers and stare at the darkening sky. To pluck crabapples and persimmons from trees and make faces as we ate them. To stargaze and talk desultorily of nothing much. To laugh and sing songs mostly out of tune.

To be.

Nobody yelled at us to get out of their yards. Nobody ran us off from anywhere we stopped. We even picked up another rider or two along the way. No one got hurt. No one got left. Nothing bad happened.

It was a night we probably would have called nothing special, but if it hadn’t been, it wouldn’t still live in my memory, nor would it be the kind of universal moment of pure magic memorialized by Thomas Wolfe.