On This Day . . .

. . . in 1956 my mama was not at home. Three days later Daddy took Jannie and me to a big parking lot. Before us was the most enormous building I had ever seen in my life; it went all the way up into the sky. Daddy sat us on the hood of the car, and told us to look very far up and we'd see Mama waving at us. I looked and looked but I only saw a gargoyle; I wondered for a moment whether something awful had happened to her, but inside I knew that wasn't my beautiful Mama. I tried so hard to find Mama somewhere up there that I fell off the car and scraped my arm. When we got home Daddy washed the scrape off over the bathroom sink. I remember it hurting and also how careful and tender he was. A few days later Mama came home with a baby. It was a little boy, named after Daddy, so a nickname was in order. We had moved from Louisiana to Texas not long before this and we started calling the new little guy "Tex" like in the cowboy movies. I was not old enough to have the sort of maternal feelings sisters sometimes have (and which I would have ten years hence for another little newcomer named Joe) but I loved my brother Tex very much.

Still do. Happy Birthday.

Tune