Tag: photos

The best times can be the ones that happen without planning. The last winter before Tom and I were married, I lived in a rural area outside his family’s city. He was visiting them from Tuscaloosa for a weekend, and–a very rare thing–none of his siblings were home. A snow storm had been forecast. Since the South doesn’t have road equipment to deal with heavy snow, it’s best for people to load up on supplies and stay home. It was decided before the snow began that it might be better if I came into town to stay with Tom and his parents.

It turned out to be the most wonderful opportunity for the four of us to get to know each other better. To enjoy a world quieted by that blanket of snow. We talked a lot, didn’t really watch TV, read, probably played a game or two, worked together to cook the meals we shared and cleaned up after. Every woman should have such a low-key few days to relax with her future family without a lot of activity and distractions.

It had been kind of a running joke that I occasionally asked Tom’s father to do stuff for me–things I could have done for myself, but I’d get all Southern belle and ask him, and he’d say, “Yes, Miss Becky, I will come check your apartment for a snake,” Or, “Yes, Miss Becky, I’ll go car shopping with you.” My father had died only a couple of years before, and though no one could ever replace him, it was nice to know that a future father-in-law would spoil me a little.

That weekend, instead of making a snow man, Tom and his parents built a Snow Belle in my honor.

Tom and his mother with their version of Miss Scarlett.

A while back, my scanner stopped getting along with my iMac, so it hooked up with its old friend the PC again. Earlier, I went into the room where the PC resides to find and scan a photo for today’s entry. But as I was looking through a stack of pictures, I glanced toward the computer table and saw this:

Sun on scarlet ribbons.

It made me think about my mother’s old Harry Belafonte album. I loved to hear her and Debby sing along to it, and my favorite from that album was “Scarlet Ribbons.”

Sound technology is a wonderful thing, but some of us of a certain age can be transported to another time just hearing the snap, crackle, and pop of a needle on vinyl.

Today you’re welcome to time travel with me to imagine my sister’s pure soprano and my mother’s deeper tones accompanying the beautiful voice of Mr. Belafonte.

P.S. to my writing partners: You see how this kind of influence in my youth led to those “saccharine” endings? And who was it who said that, anyway?

Winnie and Robert–so young here, but when I knew them, they were old. They were tall and lean, both of them, and he was only a little stooped. They both had beautiful white hair. Although they were quiet, they were favorites of mine because they both always had a smile in their eyes. Truly, though, what endeared them to me was how they were with each other. She never needed a sweater that he wasn’t there to gently drop one on her shoulders. He never wanted for something cool to drink, because she put a glass next to him before he could ask. Whenever our large extended family was together, they would laugh at all the stories with the rest of us, but sooner or later they’d go for a little walk, hand in hand, quietly continuing a conversation that had begun more than fifty years earlier.

Winnie–Winifred–was the oldest of twelve children. Fourteen, really, but one was born dead and another died in infancy. My mother was the youngest of those fourteen. When Mother saw how I watched her oldest sister and Robert, she told me their story. They fell in love, and when Winnie was eighteen, Robert asked my grandparents for her hand in marriage. But my grandmother was pregnant with Uncle John. She said Winnie couldn’t be spared; she had to take her mother’s place supervising the house and the other children until after the baby was born. Robert promised that if they were allowed to marry, he would wait as long as necessary before setting up household with her. My grandparents finally agreed; Winnie and Robert were married in June of 1921. Uncle John was born in August. I don’t know when Winnie was finally able to go home to her husband, but as promised, he waited until then for a wedding night with his bride.

When Winnie died in Tupelo on an August day at age seventy-four, we could all see that Robert had lost half of his soul. The smile was gone from his eyes. No one was surprised when he died, too, before the year was over. My mother said Robert simply had no interest in living in a world without his Winnie.