The Help and What I've Been Doing Since My Last Post 9 Days Ago

Charlie and I did go see The Help - I really, really liked it.  I had read the book already because I knew it would be so much better than the movie and I definitely wanted to see the movie - but didn't want the movie to ruin the book for me.  I have read lots of articles about the author - who is from Jackson, MS.

I am 60 - so I lived through all of that.  I have my own stories from my very white perspective and wish so much we hadn't all been so blind.  Anyone of us in my age bracket lived through the reality of that - It was and continues to be shocking to me.  I was born in 1951 and so of course in 1961 I was only 10.

The book is good and trumps the movie.  Still, the movie is so good, too.  I watched it with Mike and Mary Bratton, and Charlie and none of them had read the book.  I was curious to get their reaction.  They liked it a lot.

There's a lady in south Alabama whom I know.  I knew her as a child when she would help Mother with Mary Ann and me.  I LOVED her.  She was just a very young teenager when she would baby sit us.  I thought she was beautiful and had a magical energy.  I never forgot her.  I never knew her last name until our paths crossed again when I was 50.  Mary Ann knew she'd moved back to Evergreen and she and her sister were willing to help us care for Mom after Mother's near fatal stomach event which had put her in intensive care.  I remember my strong emotional reaction when I saw her again.  I was maybe 4 or 5 the last time I'd seen her.  I cried and was trembling.  She had no idea that she'd meant that much to me.  She still had that same energy and was still beautiful and smart and bright and laughed so much.  Here we were adults and able to share stories - mostly hers with Mary Ann and me listening.  Amazing to get her perspective, with no bitterness, on life in Evergreen, AL during all the days of segregation and then life during the time of the civil rights movement.  We had lived in the deepest of the deep south, she on the black side, Mary Ann and I on the white side.  She had loved Mother.  Even before this movie and this book, I've wanted to make some questions for an interview with her - and share it on this blog.

I'm going to do it one of these days.  She's a great story teller.  She has amazing stories!!  She and her sister together have amazing stories.

What I've been doing since the last post - Last week - getting my house and yard in order to prepare for Ada and John being with me, here at my house, for a week - while Laura Beth and Scott prepare to move into their cute rental house.

So - pictures from yesterday.  (I met LB and Scott in Adairsville.  Mary Bratton rode with me - the drive over was certainly different than the drive home.  On the way back to Scottsboro we had tired John and chatty, excited Ada in the back seat.  Mary saw my grandparenting world in full swing.)