Mattie and I

This is my cousin Mattie and I in the early 1960's. I really don't remember when this picture was taken by my Brother Henry and I had never seen it until last week.

Mattie was an only child and I come from a family of twelve children. She longed for brothers and sisters, while I enviously looked into her huge toy box and her stacks of coloring books and boxes of crayons. I would of gladly traded places, at least for a while. Mattie married and became the mother of four children and is now a grandmother with grandchildren. She has her family and her grandchildren also have a great-grandfather, because her Dad is still living, the only one of that generation. She has always been Amish, has always lived in the very same neighborhood her ancestors did for five generations. Her world has always been small, but that is her world and she is happy and content, at least I think she is.

Whereas I have always been on the go. During my childhood years we moved from one rent place to the next on the average of once a year. The longest we ever stayed at one place was five years. During those five years my parents managed to save $1,000 and so they decided they can afford to buy a farm and they did and so they stayed put. But not me, I moved to Aylmer Ontario, to Cookeville Tennessee, to Bainbridge New York, to Honduras for a winter, to NC, to TN, to Florida, back to Ohio for a year to stay with Dad and back down to Florida.

But every now Mattie and I meet again. I never tell her much about my life basically because she is a talker and I listen.