Looking through the scattered pictures of time, I see faces with smiles that were made years ago, stuck in time that possess eternal happiness. Their silent breaths of air that sustains their posture forever. Remembering the very smiles that are made and the reasons they made them returns when I see the past. The reunions of the passed ones leave residual memories in the faces and smiles of their legacies left behind. Sometimes I see the past ones in the faces of my siblings and even further the memory of the few left from the generation before us in my aunts. Many years have passed, and many lives have come and gone. A time gone by, never to be seen of or heard again, without memories, much like the rivers moving along, never to see the same water twice. I say this to tell myself to stop and remember the smiles of family and friends, to make memories that last a lifetime as the smiles turn upward and lines begin to appear, familiar yet that age cannot change who they belong to. Wind changes the lay of the land as time does the faces of the youth of time gone by, this is us as we are supposed to be. I remember so many things from the past that the story is continuous. I see as a young boy tagging along behind his sisters down the old dirt road to the home of an elderly mother and her daughter, living alone, making it as we all did. Sitting outside with the two old spinsters, I watch my sister Brenda taking the pins out of the hair from the daughter of the old woman, a woman who is aged herself. Brenda takes the long, graying hair down, brushes it out almost waist length as Linda does the same to the older, frailer gray-haired mother. Braiding and brushing until the hair is high upon the top of their heads, out of the way from the hot southern wind that seems to never stop. As they sit, the younger old lady goes inside and comes back out with several glasses of Tang, a powdered orange drink over two or three pieces of ice, sharing what little of the best they had to offer, with appreciation and a need to participate in the visitation. I’m not sure what all they talked about, but I know those two old ladies never forgot my sisters. I know this because long after the older lady had passed, the daughter lived on, lived on long enough to know my sister Brenda had died, remembering Brenda’s smile, her gentleness with herself and her mother. We received a letter from her and of course by now she no longer lived in the country. She had been taken away, perhaps to an old folk’s home. She spoke of the kindness, gratitude and friendship she and her mother had with two young girls that they sat patiently to see now and again walking up the old dirt road to give a little time to them. To perhaps let the old ladies, relieve a little youth and appreciate the time to make friends of another generation.
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