This is a picture of me with my sister, Kay. I have worshipped her my entire life, but I know the same is not true the other way around! When we were growing up I was really a fly in her soup, for sure! But to me, she was perfect-and still is. We lived in a very small town in Arkansas-Elaine, Arkansas-to be exact. She was head cheerleader, football queen, valedictorian of her class, voted most likely to succeed. You name it, she got it. She even married her high school sweetheart (captain of the football team, no less). And I looked up to her every minute of every day. She is still very happily married to the same man and he is a gem. His name is Jimmy so naturally I married a Jimmy, too. They have 3 sons and a daughter and 7 grandchildren. She and Jimmy live in this huge 1930's house in St Petersburg, Fl. that I absolutely adore visiting. It has 5 bedrooms, 2 sleeping porches, 6 bathrooms, on and on and on. You would think I would be jealous of her but the opposite is true. I am so proud to be her sister I could burst. She has a kind and generous heart and she is my link to the past and to my roots. She used to live in Memphis with the rest of the family, and right before she and her family moved they had a going away party. The whole evening my heart was breaking because my dreams of going shopping with her or out to lunch and generally spending more time with her were going up in smoke. Now she was leaving my life forever and actually seemed HAPPY about it. To top it all off she was leaving me in charge of our aging, demanding mother whom I had never been able to please a day in my life. I was devastated. When the evening was winding down I finally couldn't hold it in any more and I broke down in tears. Kay misunderstood and thought I had misinterpretted a comment she had made earlier about Mother visiting in Florida. I'll never forget what she said. "Don't worry. I'm not taking your mother away from you." If I hadn't had that knife sticking in my heart I might have laughed. Well, it turned out okay, I guess. I visit her every couple of years. I call her sometimes. And she was there when I really needed her when Mother was sssooo sick so many times and the last time when Mother fell and broke her hip and died. We don't have any brothers so Kay is all I have to tell me about the family that went before us. And I so crave to belong to that family that is now gone. She told me anecdotes about Daddy during WWII. He was a glider pilot. I have a picture of him dressed like Rambo standing in front of his glider. Kay says he never once shot his gun for fear of actually hitting someone. (hahaha) He died when I was 20-way too young. I wish I had asked him more questions about his past. She tells me stories about my grandmother that were told to her. Right now she is putting together a collection of pictures and stories of our family on the internet for others to pull from. Her husband is the clever one that knows how to do that. I guess none of us want to be forgotten. Rich people donate money in order to have buildings or universities named after themselves. The rest of us post stories about ourselves on the internet.
