Project 366...

My father's mother died when I was barely into my senior year of high school. Mamaw was a wonder. She worked until she was nearly seventy as the head of the alteration department at a local department store and made the best coconut cake in the world.

Miss Carrie, as everyone - including her husband - called her, was an anomaly of sorts in her family. She divorced my grandfather during a time when divorce was considered a mortal sin; she worked in cotton fields all day and sewed for others all night (my dad says that the last sound he heard every night before going to sleep was the whir of the old pedal sewing machine); she wore make up (gasp); she was addicted to fabric; she raised her own vegetables and tended an orchard; she cooked huge meals for the whole family every Sunday yet never missed Sunday school or church for years; she scared a would-be burglar away by quietly telling him she had a shotgun pointed at him.

Other than the aroma of roses, the one thing that evokes memories of Mamaw is the sweet smell of honeysuckle. Honeysuckle wound itself over and around an old shed in the orchard, draped itself over the fences and captured the frame of a wide swing in the front yard. My cousin and I (and later her brother and mine) would sit in the swing and drink nectar from the blooms.

Today memories fill my mind as the aroma of the honeysuckle outside floods my house.

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