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p xi Foreword For most of the twenty-five years that I have known Donna Davenport , I’ve dreaded the day her mother died, for one couldn’t know Donna without realizing how important Dixie was in her daughter’s life. During these twenty-five years, Donna has been busy providing psychotherapy, teaching psychology at the doctoral level, and writing professional books and articles. More to the point, she possesses a finely honed intelligence, a dry wit, and a deep sense of compassion and understanding that she brings to bear upon those who know her. When I finally met Dixie, I began to see where it all began. Dixie Davenport was a small and elegant lady. Her pride was mostly expressed in a firm, well-formed character, for she was indeed a person who quietly lived the values she espoused. Her pride was also evident in her dress. A few years ago, Donna and I took my elderly (and also elegant)Aunt Elizabeth and Dixie to the lake in northern New Jersey where Elizabeth grew up and I spent all my childhood vacations. It was a blazingly beautiful fall and the last two weeks the lake was open to visitors: a cool, quiet time with most of the summer folk gone. We had fires at night and spent the days walking in the woods, canoeing, and generally tramping around. Elizabeth kept taking me aside and making sotto voce comments about how beautiful Dixie looked and how well she was dressed. Everything matched. Everything was bright and beautiful. Dixie, with her petite, perfectly postured body and white, bobbed hair always looked like she had just stepped off a fashion runway. In my entire life, I’d never known my aunt to express the slightest insecurity about her appearance. But she did around Dixie. Shortly after Dixie’s death, Donna spent the weekend at my house. Exhausted from the demands of shuttling back and forth between Dixie’s bedside in Dallas and maintaining a regular teaching and counseling schedule in Bryan, Donna slept most of the time. Finally she went out to her car and brought in boxes of lace and crochet and FOREWORD P xii handsewn clothes to show me—things her great-grandmothers, grandmother, great-aunts, and mother made for themselves and their children. We sat on the floor and spilled out a hundred and fifty years of tiny baby garments covered with delicate embroidery, dresses for growing girls, crocheted collars, and nightgowns and petticoats for the women. One of these pieces epitomizes Dixie to me: a handmade pale lemon yellow organdy shift from her college days, as light as a ray of sun. Sandwiched between the two layers of organdy on the front, fabric prints of pink roses were glimpsed dimly through the organdy—as elegant a touch as any dress I’ve ever seen. It was understated , quiet, vibrant, and as lovely as she was. I don’t think I’ve ever known another person who loved her mother as much as Donna. As a therapist, it is common for me to see the malformations of great love into symbiosis or twists of love and hate. But Donna and Dixie’s relationship had clear boundaries, caring , and respect, and appeared to have been without significant strain throughout their lives together. They truly blessed each other’s lives, adjusting their roles as they grew older to allow and acknowledge each other’s maturity and life experiences. I should have known that just as she loved her mother so well in life, Donna would use that love to transform her experience of adjusting to Dixie’s death. This book, which she began writing almost as soon as she returned from the funeral, is both the result and the beginning. In it, you will come to know two remarkable women. Joan Matthews, Ph.D. ...

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