Family and the Mississippi Delta

This is my sister and cousin, Freddy, in the summer of 1946, outside my grandmother's house in Moorhead. Laverne has no shoes on. Laughing. A trait that is normal for most kids playing in the hot Delta. That's a little wooden rocking horse flipped up, and there is a sliver of the ever present black maid. My sister is a lot older than me. When one is very young that is significant, but as one gets older, it is not. My mother was married twice and had two sets of children. Laverne is from the older set and I from the younger set. The beautiful thing about our sibling relationship is that there was never any competition. In fact, she 'mothered' me in many ways. I am writing short stories and this photo is part of my research and put here as part of my Writing Notebook. Freddy died two years ago. Another idiosyncratic member of our strange family tribe. He lived in Alaska. His ashes were buried in the Mississippi Delta.