This is from my Tia Suzanna about my mom....how it all began, my roots....
Larabee LoRee
Her hair was shiny and dark in a braid as thick as your wrist.
It was long and straight, cool and heavy, soft as silk.
She kept her clothes in a cardboard box and wore them wrinkled
although so many of them were antique treasures with handmade lace.
She wore old jeans that were way too big and tied them up at the waist,
Birkenstock sandals with dirty white socks were always on her feet
She canned 50 quarts of sauerkraut even though nobody would eat it.
Pickled beets, green beans, tomatoes and dill pickles filled the shelves by the end of summer.
The house was old and held together with thick white paint.
The rough wood floor was slanted, the cracks packed with dirt.
There were National Geographic magazines to read, no music or TV.
The kitchen was warm and smelled like soup and homemade bread.
She grew beds of pansies, dark purple and bright yellow outside the front door and trimmed the grass with an old pair of scissors on her hands and knees.
Morning glory vines covered the wall on the sunny side of the house.
A curtain of vines, leaves and flowers covered the kitchen window.
When her little girls got something new from Grandma she'd let them drink grape juice without a bib, dark stains spoiled every pretty dress.
Blackberry picking along the narrow road all summer long, eating one for every one that got into the dented silver strainer. They somehow always got enough to make two pies.
She'd take them on walks in the rain down to where the creek met the river
to watch huge redwood logs float by, the railroad bridge high overhead.
LoRee had laughing eyes, the darkest brown and framed with thick lashes.
She sang and clowned around and knew something about everything.
Don't bother to argue with LoRee, she knew what was better, butter or margarine. A down-home hippie guru, she was only 21.
Her hair was shiny and dark in a braid as thick as your wrist.
It was long and straight, cool and heavy, soft as silk.
She kept her clothes in a cardboard box and wore them wrinkled
although so many of them were antique treasures with handmade lace.
She wore old jeans that were way too big and tied them up at the waist,
Birkenstock sandals with dirty white socks were always on her feet
She canned 50 quarts of sauerkraut even though nobody would eat it.
Pickled beets, green beans, tomatoes and dill pickles filled the shelves by the end of summer.
The house was old and held together with thick white paint.
The rough wood floor was slanted, the cracks packed with dirt.
There were National Geographic magazines to read, no music or TV.
The kitchen was warm and smelled like soup and homemade bread.
She grew beds of pansies, dark purple and bright yellow outside the front door and trimmed the grass with an old pair of scissors on her hands and knees.
Morning glory vines covered the wall on the sunny side of the house.
A curtain of vines, leaves and flowers covered the kitchen window.
When her little girls got something new from Grandma she'd let them drink grape juice without a bib, dark stains spoiled every pretty dress.
Blackberry picking along the narrow road all summer long, eating one for every one that got into the dented silver strainer. They somehow always got enough to make two pies.
She'd take them on walks in the rain down to where the creek met the river
to watch huge redwood logs float by, the railroad bridge high overhead.
LoRee had laughing eyes, the darkest brown and framed with thick lashes.
She sang and clowned around and knew something about everything.
Don't bother to argue with LoRee, she knew what was better, butter or margarine. A down-home hippie guru, she was only 21.
