….And maybe it is the schnapps
but I find myself thinking about someone from my early childhood….Annie —and maybe it is this way on a much larger scale for all of them
like going down an Einstein-Rosen bridge through time
but as I sit there I am not thinking about vampires or what is even happening presently…. no I am somewhere else thinking about many years ago like a life time ago as a little girl and time is so strange
People say Florida is not really the South as it’s all owned by the Yanks but considering one hundred years is just twenty years more than a lifespan. How much closer it brings the American Civil War into a present reality. Because the locals before the Yanks arrived had their roots already there and these were the ones New Yorker’s kids went to school with and were taught by; these were the locals who got hired as “maids” and “gardeners”. And who were these people and where did they learn all that from
So….sitting there looking out the window watching for deer or coyote my thoughts drift to Annie and maybe it is the schnapps ….but inwardly I start to cry— only one tear escapes as I keep my eyes set upon the dense forest…. Why do I think of her, from a life time —it feels—ago. When it feels I’ve lived so many lifetimes in this one
She was the one I would see first after school. She was the one who asked how school was. The one who always gave me the best advice and the one who saw the family charade for what it was but never uttered a word on it. And always I was called “Miss” by her before my name and she spoke with a very thick southern twang, the kind with the long drawn out drawl so a sentence could dangle you in suspense for sometimes awhile if she was ironing. For a very long time I never asked her why she did that; called me “Miss” before my name. Then one day I did. And she told me about her life and her family’s past on a slave plantation (in Georgia). She seemed old to me. Maybe she was. She had grown children. Her black lined face showed the years and her black hair, always neatly pinned, was coursed with gray. I still didn’t know why she said she called me “Miss” out of respect and I remember saying so because to me she was more like a mother ….
you go back to a point of reference within where you might have recalled a glimpse of comfort ….her hugs always made everything right and looking back I know she favored me and perhaps now I understand why….it was with her the day on the public bus when they pointed st me, the day my mother forgot to get me, the day my notorious father died it was; Annie brought me to her house for the one and only time I ever saw it….it was in the ghetto. I remember holding her hand in her kitchen as she called all my family’s emergency numbers
It makes me wonder about Jörn —that he should love me ….so faithfully through time ….how could I be so blind realizing
