To a Family Institution

C7 To a Family Institution by Samantha Clementine Dear Grade, You don 't have ivy on your walls, Gracie. I was glad to see that, last time you came. You've moved about too fast, I expect, for any parasite to grow, even if one seed could have attached itself to you as you went by at 55 miles an hour; or have located you at stops to pursue the effort; a few days here, and a few days there, your car loaded with interesting things; your suit case open on your bed in whatever room or corner of the living room or kitchen; wherever we, being poor people, could put you up. We were always pleased to tuck you up somewhere in the house and enjoy your company for a while, the whole family, each unit of the family; each small branch of the whole, every trip you made from wherever you'd been before; Iowa, Wyoming, Colorado, the East Coast, or the West. 12 Even when I was a child, and that was a long time ago, it was the same. . .telling us stories; making Christmas fun, no matter how scanty the trim or the feast; adding your little bit of brightness and sweet in artistic little packages. Bossing us around some, too. We didn't mind. You used to let us go through your purse and look at all your things; little vials ofperfume, pieces ofjewelry, powder; things little girls delight in. Once, I remember , there was a nugget ofgold that you and Gil dug out of the earth or pannedfrom a stream. . .wherever nuggets of gold turn up. That was when he was still with you, and you'd been prospecting in the West. You never got rich, but you must have had a lot of fun. The way you told things were better than Jack London to me, anyway . I remember when you came to our school one day, out of the clear sky, the way you nearly always came; just rolled in one day at home and then popped up at the school. And the teacher left you in charge of the fifth and sixth grade room. You told the students a lot ofinteresting things about your travels, and taught us a song, and were so entertaining that I was proud as a peacock to own you as my own family 's institution, when the other children would say, "Was that really your sister?" and the teacher said nice things about you. Do you remember the time when I was in my teens and we hitch-hiked to Glouster and told Papa we went to Lancaster? We had somebody at Lancaster, but there was nobody at Glouster but that old Indian and his tent show that was an "abomination" to our father, and probably to all other respectable citizens, but he was a lot more entertaining than our relatives at Lancaster. And it was so much farther to Glouster, too. I'd have gotten a heavy hand on me if it had come out, and I don't doubt you'd have been run off the place for your part in the scheme. And it nearly did come out because that preacher picked us up after we'd had to walk from Nelsonville to Haydenville and our feet were coming off. The preacher insisted on bringing us right to our door and coming in to sit a while with our parents. Oh, it was all that two slick tongues could do to keep them talking religion so that the preacher might not mention which way he was traveling that brought him to Logan, with Lancaster in exactly the opposite direction. Oh, My! It raises my hair to this day to remember that half hour or so that he sat there refusing to go. "Contributing to the delinquency of a minor," is what they'd have called it. You were 3 7 years old, passing for 25 on that lark. But who that walks the straight and narrow ever had so much fun? And you'd have knocked the slats out of anybody that tried to mess with me. Tender, loving care isn't always...