Portland, Tennessee, was a town so small that the arrival of Mamma’s grandchildren—my mother and her four siblings among them—got announced in the local paper. They came during summers and holidays, filling the large white clapboard house. I imagine my great-grandmother preparing for their visit, bustling over the yellow-tiled floor of her kitchen, between its seven doors—including to the screened-in porch where she slept nearly year-round; to the sewing room with scraps of cloth, needled pincushions, and wintertime bed; to the wallpapered dining room; to the pantry; and to the second screened-in porch she used as a kind of root cellar.
In old photographs, Mamma—who died before I was born—appears invariably stern, her pursed lips forming an exact horizontal line. But by all accounts, her outward restraint belied an inner exuberance—a love of daily life
