ancestors

This is a photograph of a typical hard-working American family taken about one hundred years ago, probably in Rosenberg, Texas. My cousin just emailed it to me; the little girl squinting, lower right, is my grandmother Exia Southwick (nee Rawson). Exia was a character. She was high spirited, loved to laugh and created magical gardens in California where she lived as an adult. I remember a garden in San Jose with apricot and almond trees (delicious) and gladiolus, roses, pansies and fuschias which I made into ballerinas. Along her driveway was a cactus garden in which I frequently fell while jumping rope, roller skating or chasing jacks balls and consequently hated. Exia always loved the mountains of California and loved nothing better than to jump in the car and drive to Yosemite, which we often did. She thought nothing of driving from California to Texas and did so through hurricanes on occasion. Exia was a red-head, my mother is a red-head and my daughter is a red-head and Exia lived to see the birth of my daughter on her own birthday.
- Kathy