days afterwards, and who did not see me for over a year.
I am from a civil war area, the war torn land of Arkansas,
a land where the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, Creek and Seminole Indians left a trail of tears that
soaked the delta along the Mississippi River, the fields of bright white cotton,
the rolling hills and valleys of central Arkansas as they trudged forward looking towards the opalescent
skies and the rugged sapphire, amber and jade mountains
of the Ouachitas and the Ozarks as they made their way across Arkansas and finally
reached the designated Indian Territory now known as Oklahoma.
I am from another lifetime--
slow, lethargic days of summer that seemed to go on endlessly--
days without television and malls.
Days filled with sitting on the front porch shelling peas with my mother, aunts, cousins and
grandmother,
--with sopping her biscuits in red-eye gravy
and going to the fields with my grandfather and watching him thump the watermelons
until he chose the "just right" one,
hours of going behind him gathering potatoes as he and his mule plowed the furrows and
unearthed the treasures to be stored in my grandmother's food cellar.
I come from a time of small country churches heated by pot-bellied wood stoves,
wooden slatted benches that left deep marks on one's legs after sitting
for hours at the all day fellowship meetings held every fifth Sunday of the month.
In summer those same churches were not air conditioned
and had no fans of any kind--well, just the hand-held kind that came from the funeral home.
Towards mid-afternoon after all the water jugs had been drained dry and the babies had fallen asleep in
spite of the heat, I remember the dry parched roughness of my throat--
I remember the almost absolute stillness with the buzzing of the flies, the slow, drawled words of a
boring speaker--
and then, the banjos, fiddles, tambourines, guitars, mandolins, accordions, and piano
would give a charge of electricity to the meeting and all thoughts of thirst were forgotten
as praises extended to the highest heavens and a sweet breeze blew through that little country church.
I come from the days of dinner on the ground--yes, laid out on the ground on red-checkered cloths--
from old men standing around swapping old news while some of the children played tag
and others drew circles on the ground and played marbles until they got blisters on their thumbs.
I come from the days of baptisms in a country creek--
yes, I remember holding hands with a long line of my friends as we gingerly made our
way out into the cool gurgling waters of the rocky creek and one by one as a symbol of our faith
in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus who paid the price for the remission of our sins,
went down in the murky darkness and came up into a bath of sunlight.
Even the rocky creek bottom felt like we were dancing on air!
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*end of first segment of I Am From*
all art, photography and text copyright material of Elizabeth Dianne except where otherwise noted
