Beautiful Easter Sunday. The birds enjoyed the sunshine, so did I. Ashamed I didn’t go to church today. Just wasn’t up for it. Another holiday without Chief and Rosie. I bet Easter Sunday in heaven is glorious. Bet the flowers are beautiful and the birds are singing. I pray all my family up there are gathered together. Chief always thought heaven was just an extension of earth. He talked of gardening there with my daddy and of me cooking and making homemade biscuits. Guess Rosie and Mama are doing the cooking. Chief’s mother is probably the biscuit maker. Got to ask my brothers but I can’t remember eating biscuits as a child except at Christmas when we had country ham for breakfast. Oldest brother said mama made delicious homemade cinnamon rolls. Said she put them on the dining room hearth to rise. I don’t remember that, either.

Course I can’t remember what happened yesterday unless I sit and really ponder about it. The human mind is really a fascinating thing. I’ve always wondered how many names and faces a person can remember and recognize. Research says the average person knows 5000 faces. I know I don’t know 5000. It’s really hard for me to remember names and faces unless I have lots of contract with them. This 5000 includes tv personalities, sports figures, schools folks, etc. I can remember my first grade teacher, Mrs. Quattlebaum, but can’t name all of my college professors. I’m always telling Thomas maybe I need some Ginkgo Biloba. We always get a good laugh with that.

I know Chief probably knew the names of thousands of mill employees when he saw them in their work setting in the mills but struggled with their names when he saw them out in town. Almost every time Chief and I travelled somewhere he would see someone he knew or someone he was kin to. At one of my college friend’s wedding he sat down at the rehearsal dinner in Milledgeville, GA and saw one of his friends from college. It was kind of a family joke, if he didn’t know someone, he would talk to a stranger and find they had kinfolks who knew each other or had gone to a Methodist church where his uncle preached. He always found a connection.

I was sitting on the porch this afternoon thinking about the windows I had wrestled up the other day then turned around and pulled them back down during Mother Nature’s cold spell. They’ll be swollen up from the rain so it will be a struggle to get them up again. Was telling Stew if we get locked out of the house the window we use to get in is now bolted shut.

Got locked out of the house in Alex City several months after Chief died. I had to drag an old wooden high chair off the front porch around to the kitchen windows, then had to get my slender self up on top of the high chair, hoping it wouldn’t break, so I could reach the window. It probably looked like a three stooges movie if it was filmed. I managed to get up to the windows and when I pushed myself through one of the windows, I fell in the sink and one of the belt loops on my blue jeans slid down the handle of the sink and turned the water on high. I was trapped by the sink handle and the water was running all over me. I swear, all I did was just lay there laughing. Had to slide out of my pants to get down. Had to wear those wet pants home to Roanoke.

Last time I got locked out here in Roanoke I went through the window where a wasp nest was hanging. Stew told me to watch out. Wasn’t worried but a wasp flew up my nose and stung me! Hurt like hell fire but I made it in, crashed on the sofa, and cried my way to the front door to let Stew in.

Do you have a house key hidden on your porch? All my life here in Roanoket, till we changed the locks after a robbery, the front door key always sat on the top of the doorframe. We never used it. I could barely reach it. The internet says the worst place to hide your door key is under your door mat or a potted plant on the porch. The best place to hide your door key is a fake rock that blends into the surroundings. Can you buy fake rocks? Don’t know.

Ever been locked out of your house? Sometimes it’s easy to get in, sometimes it’s a struggle.

“If the door is locked try the window.”—Lynn Caine