Mae Francis

I have a very good friend.  Her name is Mae.  She is one of the most interesting people I've ever known.  She has been through so much in her life.  I can't think of a single trial a person could go through that she hasn't personally taken on.  I would list them, but somehow that seems to detract from the straight-backed, head-high way that she faced them.  She wouldn't want me to spread her business around.

I've really  missed her the past week--she died last October.  I've been reading The Help and I would love to sit in Mae's living room and discuss it with her.  She was born in the late thirties in the South and would have been around the age of all the characters in it.  I'm sure her mother or grandmother worked in a white family's home.  I remember her stories about it.  I remember her stories of walking to school and seeing the white kids on the bus going the other direction to their school.  I could listen to Mae tell stories for hours.

I miss listening to her--her deep, years of smoking voice.  I miss the wisdom that came through when she told me how to manage an issue with one of my kids.  I miss the laughing.  Give me a wise woman in her sixties or seventies any day.  I wish I had a photo of her already in my computer so I could post it.  I hope she and her sister Iva are laughing and telling stories where they are now.