Photograph

The photograph is of my grandmother early in the last century.

She was a plain woman, but the camera found her smile

with which she’d light up a room and my heart

whenever we were together.

Where she got it I don’t know,

for her mother and mother-in-law were tough, stern women.

Oh, they were that way for good reason.

Her mother was the widow of a Confederate veteran,

and her husband’s mother came south after the Civil War

to educate former slaves and met my Great Grandfather Jacob

while he was being spit at on the streets of Lynchburg

for doing the same thing.

Her name was Louise

which she conveyed to a beautiful, brown haired daughter

who left it to my cousin, Nancy.

Unlike almost everyone else she loved me

simply because I existed with no qualifiers or fine print clauses.

She could have found lots of reasons to dim her smile:

her fractious sons,

her weird grandson who sometimes used her house

to escape the pressures of his own,

severe limits her society put on her conduct.

Instead she emanated warmth from her deep well of affection.

I don’t have a picture of her best accomplice in affection.

Her housekeeper, Sadie, was almost as free with love,

and hers had a more familiar, earthy feel.

I’m blessed to have known them both.

(c)Wayland Yoder          2005