when we lived in the mountains . . .

. . . and what a view! The daffodils were blooming at the foot of Parker Mountain and, at home, a quarter mile up the gravel drive, baby brother Jamie had finally arrived.

Two short years later came our time to say good-bye . . .

flower girl debut . . .

Fortunately for Kimberly (and her mother), Aunt Evelyne forgave her for delighting the congregation at her wedding as she created petal pictures on the altar steps during the ceremony.

big sister

Michelle arrived a week late, that very hot Virginia July of 1971. Kimberly and Raggedy Ann spent that week and more visiting Mama :-)

Sibling rivalry indeed?! Kimberly was born knowing how to be a big sister . . .

caught napping

velvet and curls

all dressed up
to meet
my
Daddy
home
from
the
war . . .

first flight . . .

to Atlanta, I think . . . just the two of us

cemetery-traipsing buddies

One October--maybe the autumn before Garrett was born--Kimberly and I went cemetery traipsing in the cornfields and byways of Eastern North Carolina. We found Silas Crisp--he who was gone but not forgotten. We found Henrietta--Henrietta, wife of M. M. Crisp . . . No maiden name. . . Kimberly's brick wall, a wall she was soon to conquer, brick by brick, using her genealogist tools.

Remember that paper towel? Well, if you take another look, you will see that it listed Henrietta’s father as ‘Charlie.’ And my great-grandmother, Mammy Pattie, daughter of Henrietta? Her middle name was ‘Lucy.’ Not yet conclusive evidence that my Henrietta was the daughter of Charley & Lucy MEARES (I need to do additional research), but I know in my heart it is true. Henrietta has finally come back to tell her story.

We've traipsed other cemeteries too.

Johnstown's Grandview cemetery.

Sacred ground at Shanksville.

Memorials to those who lie under Lake Murray.

And, two Christmases ago, in the rain, the Summer Family Cemetery where the founder of the community where I work is buried.

Cemetery-traipsing buddies we are indeed, my daughter and I :-)

a genealogist's roots . . .

in Kimberly's own words . . .

My personal brick wall began with a paper towel – one of the brown industrial types often found in public restrooms. It was 1969, the year I was born, and my mother and great-grandmother were sitting by my grandfather’s bedside in a hospital room, when my mother felt the need to ask about her family roots. In my mother’s own words, “All that had never seemed quite so important before on Daddy’s side since, after all, his people were all on this side of the Atlantic.” But with her father lying in a hospital bed losing his desperate battle with cancer, the need suddenly became very real. My great-grandmother, Pattie Crisp Owens, known to her grandchildren as Mammy Pattie, shared with my mother the precious little she knew about her family that day.
With nothing handy to write on, my mother recorded the names given to her by Mammy Pattie on that brown paper towel – a towel that again made an appearance 11 years later when I came home and announced I had a family tree project to do for school. The search for Henrietta MARIN began that day . . .

letting her go . . .

It seldom snows in December in South Carolina--or in the first days of January, for that matter. But, that first Christmas home from Carnegie-Mellon, something in the skies above our home wanted to hold Kimberly here. We were snowdrifted, icebound--but she had a plane to catch and I had my new and blue Bonneville to slipslide our way to the nearby airport in and . . . Wonder if that something in the skies above our home knew that someone in Pittsburgh would steal our firstborn away from home for keeps . . .

Kimberly comes home to us--Albrecht, Kelsey, Garrett, and Kira Rose in tow--every Christmas season, even now.

If you love somebody, let them go, for if they return, they were always yours . . . ." -- Kahlil Gibran

a flute story . . .

lights, camera, Kimberly????

bathing beauty

Christmas at Mama's: 1976

For Jamie and Michelle, this would be their one Christmas Day at Mama's house--that last winter we lived in the Virginia mountains outside Charlottesville. But for Kimberly, who spent her first two Christmases here healing Mama's heart after Granddaddy Owens died, this Christmas was about coming home . . .

Like the angel on her white Christmas stocking, Kimberly was our hope on the darkest of days, in the darkest of times . . .


Above the mantle in this picture hung a portrait of her grandfather. There are no pictures of Kimberly with Granddaddy Owens--except the one in my memory.

It's a July afternoon in 1969. Daddy's sitting on one of those folding lawn chairs on the brick patio just outside the room pictured here, holding his first grandchild in his lap . . . I so want to snap that picture, for her, but I know he would want, in her created memory, to be the man in that portrait above the mantle. So I put the camera, and the wish, away--but never, ever, the memory of that July afternoon in 1969.

a season for celebrations:

Kimberly's birthday, Easter, and spring

always a writer . . .

Did Kimberly ever tell you about winning the Lieutenant Governor's Essay Contest--not just for her school but for her entire school district--in eighth grade? And that she had to read her essay to the school board and its audience? Bet she hasn't, shy baby that she still is! But she was a gifted writer long before she knew she wanted to be a gifted writer . . . Then and now, I was and am so proud of her accomplishments :-)

and Mommy made both dresses :-)

how quickly she grew . . . but some things never change--like the smile on her lips and in her eyes :-)

Minuet and Dance of the Blessed Spirits

Even as a child I was intrigued by the love story of Orpheus and Eurydice . . . My first encounter with this musical selection from Gluck's opera of the same name (as the love story) was Kimberly's gift to us. Her first public performance of this piece? Her brother's First Communion--on his 9th birthday.

Not so many years ago she surprised me--made me cry, too!--by playing this piece in church during one of my visits to Pittsburgh. Of all the music with which she has enriched my life, this is our closest tie, our song. I guess that also makes James Galway, whom she had the honor of meeting in person when he visited South Carolina many years ago, our musician.


Thank you, Kimberly, for this gift, this memory, beyond price!

She has a reputation, I hear,

for creating the most original Halloween costumes on the block. What you may not know is that practice is what made her perfect at the art of disguise . . . Check out the gypsy and her impish brother captured for posterity here . . . Wouldn't you love to know her thoughts?

how book addicts are created . . .

You may have wondered how Kimberly came to be such a voracious consumer of good books . . . Here's the scoop: books were a breakfast menu staple in the old days when she was young! They still are . . . and she still is :-)

younger sister stories . . . on the occasion of big sister's 40th birthday

Kimberly....I can barely remember our childhood. Mainly I remember always being jealous of Kimberly. Hating her birthday came before mine...things like that. One or two things stand out about Kimberly. She'll hate me for this but, oh well. That's what little sisters are for!

When we were real little...I was younger than 6, so she would have been 8 or younger at the time. Apparently she had a penchant for butter. They didn't have tubs of butter back then, just the sticks. I guess Kimberly got extra hungry one night and decided to snag a stick of butter to munch on in our bedroom upstairs.Next thing we know, there is butter dripping through the floor down into the living room where our parents were watching TV! BUSTED!!!! Lesson learned, do NOT place butter sticks on the heater vent in your room!! Hee hee!

One other fine event: one afternoon Kimberly and I were playing around in my room. We were actually getting along for a change! We started thinking that tumbling on my bed was a brilliant idea. As in somersaults on the bed. Kimberly tumbled a little too far, and ended up putting her FOOT through the wall! Now this would have been bad enough, yet we decided to LIE about what we were doing to try to get out of trouble. I forget what we said, but Daddy did NOT fall for it. I guess because the hole in the wall was suspiciously shaped like a FOOT!!! We were almost banned from going to the fair that afternoon because of our lie. I'm pretty sure we ended up going.

Like I said, my memory is sketchy.

I am getting old, too, you know.

Not as old as Kimberly, though! :)

Love, Michelle