When I Was Five

   

When I was five, the couple dancing here were young and expecting a son named Jon.  Now they are grandparents because Jon and his wife also had a son a few years ago.  Her name is Sherry, said like mine but spelled correctly.  They knew my grandmother.  They were in my hometown of Frederick, Oklahoma, and they were in our congregation.  I was not a regular member yet.  I just went from time to time with my grandmother.  But I remember standing in my grandmother's driveway on a chilli but not wintery day and Sherry was pregnant and she told me I had such pretty red hair.  My grandmother said yes, but Tom wants you to have a boy.  

Frederick was an economically harsh place, evidenced by the fact that we had so much trouble attracting brothers to shepherd the congregation there because once there they could not earn a decent living.  Tom and Sherry had to move soon thereafter, and I barely remembered them, but my grandmother would speak fondly of them all my life.  Before they were there, it was a couple named Larry and Leona Mack, then a family of Brocks, (I think, I know they had a daughter named Corinne) and after them it was Mick and Peggy Smith.  Now, Mick I remember because I went over the baptism questions with him.  They had to return to California eventually too, and it was just a revolving door for trying to keep people in Frederick.

When I was very little, we had an anointed sister who conducted the book study and then on Sunday, a brother would drive in from Altus or Lawton (Oklahoma) or Vernon (Texas).  He would give the talk, conduct the WT with the anointed sister reading the paragraphs sometimes, but she had fading eyesight so sometimes he did that too.  Then we would all go to my grandmother's house to eat.

She made these yeast rolls to die for.  And fried chicken.  I don't know what she did to her pintos but I have never in my life been able to figure out how to get that taste since.  Then she would pack all the leftovers for his trip home, and we would go back to the hall, have the school and the service meeting.  The brother would give every part on the service meeting and the instruction talk on the school.

Sometimes the sisters giving the talk and householding would just trade seats for the next talk.  That's how few sisters there were.

Later on, when my brown little beans were four and five, Sherry and Tom lived in Lawton, Oklahoma, where we were.  They still remember going to meetings and get togethers (and especially shopping) with Sherry in her Mercury Marquise, how smooth the leather seats were.  I still remember in spring with the windows open, Sherry would knock on our upstairs apartment door and when I answered she'd say she knew I was home; she could hear my typewriter keys clacking all the way to the parking lot.

Even though this is a second-hand laptop and my hearing is not what it once was, I don't think it clacks.  But I am still writing away.  Tom sent me this picture, and except for the silver hair, it still looks like Tom and Sherry to me.  

I want to go home.  I want to stay here.  I want to go to Saipan where Becky is.  I want to live forever.