Hide and Seek

Continued...
     The games adults play aren’t quite as innocent or lovely as the childhood ones, but many are introduced on the playground of youth. The childhood games have rules, written on the box-top kind of rules. Passed-down-in-time rules. Breakable but defined. Maybe adult games are the same, minus the written. The instructions for my mother’s game must have been penned once upon a time by her on a dirt playground and then washed away like pollen somewhere back in Fulton. A secret set of rules gave her the edge as she championed her version of “Hide and Seek” making the endless hunt to no avail for the seeker, with one exception. But the event in 1966 drove my mother farther into hiding even from the one she most revered.

     At this crossroad, I'll set the stage for the next segment, perhaps the most difficult one, by resurrecting another of my grandmother Nannie's letters.  Here is another of her correspondences to Cousin Sarah in Birmingham.

Nov. 17, 1966

Thursday

Dear Sarah,
The old woman is being self-indulgent again—writing to you instead of working on the masses of family clippings. We think we leave this world. Instead, it recedes, so many of our loved ones gone, that one day more or less ceases to scare me.
This is one of those unseasonably warm days, sunny until now (noon) when the shadows softly come and softly go. Porter always told me that a deep freeze was apt to come to Montgomery about middle of November.
Am trying to build enough strength to go to the wedding of Missie’s beloved friend, Kitty Shertzer, who lives across from us. Missie is to be a bridesmaid, both girls are aged 20. Too young.

Always devotedly,

Mattie

My older brother George came home for Thanksgiving at my urging.  He had plans to spend the holiday with a fraternity brother, but I cajoled him into coming home to see my first walk as a bridesmaid. I believe it is fair to say that he and I would have done anything for each other. He changed plans, accepted invitations to the wedding and pre-wedding parties, but never saw me as a bridesmaid, not then, not ever.