Opal

                                                   Opal Antionette Terrell  in 1914

October 19, 2013

Tonight I am in Tyler, Texas – the city of my birth almost 73 years ago. As I stand looking out on the busy street below my hotel room window, I think of my mother and father and the small clinic where I was born. Tomorrow would have been Mother's 100^th birthday so we will go to visit her grave in a small cemetery in Bullard, Texas -  a small town south of here where both my maternal and paternal grandparents lived, and where Mother and Daddy met and were married, and where their remains lie, marked by a single piece of granite.  The cemetery is the burial place for many others of my relatives, and is a place I visit not out of obligation or of belief that I am visiting them, but as a sign of respect and a way of keeping our family story. A way of saying “I remember.”

Today is also a day that I gave birth to our second son, who was born only minutes before midnight the night before what was then my mother's 67th birthday. She came shortly after his birth and welcomed her newest grandchild and splendid birthday gift.  Birthing day and all his boyhood birthdays, these too, remembered.  

                                  Opal and her oldest brother, Vinnon Terrell  in  1914

                                         Opal, her oldest brother Vinnon, and younger brother, Travis

                                                            Opal Terrell