THURSDAY WITH SIS

After a late-night long time of talking, I emerged from our room to find Sis sitting in the downstairs den with her cup, feet up on the ottoman and a fluffy pink plaid blanket around her feet. She'd plugged in the pot, got out cups and all the needfuls, and the whole house smelled of the fragrant brew. I sat and tucked my feet up, as well, and we talked and watched Cash Cab and then went up with our second percolator into the sunshine of the upstairs sitting room.

Chris came home for lunch, and we got out the Things in Dishes, plus the leftover Chinese, which is always the best leftovers, ever. We just talked and sat until about two, then got out the albums she’d brought. Apparently most of the pictures inside had been applied by me or by her---someone with childish zeal and a heavy hand, with great glops of Elmer’s on the stiff corners clutching them to the sheets of black crumbly paper.

I got us out each a small cake-icing spatula, and we sat and slid the dull flat blades into the gaps between paper and picture, easing them away from the corners, and leaving quite a few big fuzzy dots on the backs. With small scissors, we trimmed all the edges neat of the clinging black fibers and clumps, brushing away all the residue we could manage, for later ease in snugging the pictures into a new archival album.

We passed pictures back and forth, resorting to the big negative-clarity magnifier a few times, and for ONCE, had only ONE person pictured whom we did not know---one of Mammaw’s Sisters-in-Law who attended her housewarming when they got their new house in 1959. I'll have to look it up in the Family Tree, but that's pretty good for a bookful of pictures, long forgotten.

Even with small snaps of Sis’ second birthday party, she named every single small face beneath the party-hats, saying where they went to college and who they married, and for most, where they are now.

We reminisced of young friends lost way too soon, and how our hearts were broken in that youthful, devastated way---for such useless loss of all that bright promise, of course, but in a personal aspect, in that WE were affected, and that was just too much to bear. We spoke of folks from our hometown, from the surrounding towns, from college, from our heres and nows, with delight in some and regret in others.

We just kept throwing each other lines and remembrances, which in turn kindled others and more memories as the words flowed faster than thought; we DID laugh ourselves silly. Sis says we haven’t had a good visit til we cry some and wet our pants laughing.

And it was a MARVELOUS visit.

And moire non.