A song on the radio brought back a very vivid memory this morning. I was suddenly sitting in the old country church my grandparents attended, listening to a tinny piano bang out an ancient hymn, and I was wearing a frothy confection of a Sunday dress with a binding bodice and puffy sleeves. There was a white hat and gloves and pinchy patent leather Sunday shoes. It was probably in the summer because all the windows were open. Industrious wasps and dirt daubers buzzed in the corners building nests that were destined to be broken down eventually. Somehow they weren't quite fooled by the blue ceiling paint that lore said ensured their absence.
I gazed out the window to the tiny cemetery beyond. That cemetery always fascinated me as a child, with its population of ancient tombstones covered in small trinkets. For some reason we never tried to pry those small treasures from their places among the dead. Somehow they seemed right- they were home.
This, of course, never stopped us from playing hide and seek amongst the graves and in the small woods beyond the church. My cousins and sisters and I were a sort of girl's club. It was unofficial of course. We were an impenetrable sisterhood of secrets and giggles, mysterious and raucous at the same time. The six of us were bound back then by our pouffy dresses and how fast we could get out of them after church.
