Pride and Joy | Eastern North Carolina Now

    Publisher's note: Please join me in welcoming Author Michele Rhem, who presents us with her poignant memoirs of the Rabbit Patch, where her diaries weave tales of a simpler, expressive life lost to many, but gathered together in her most familiar environs - the Rabbit Patch.

    Officially, Thanksgiving, has passed. Already, Christmas trees are up and twinkling in windows in many homes and reindeer graze in yards-with a little imagination. I love Christmas!-but I am not yet over Thanksgiving. The "dust has not settled" for me and so the pumpkins will grace the yard and the leaves will tattle that the mulcher is on the blink, a while longer.

    This morning, Kyle brought breakfast and mama added all sorts of side dishes, for a late breakfast. Tres, Kyle and Christian split wood afterwards and Daddy supervised. Mama, Kelsey and I were snug inside and were thankful for it.

    A cousin came in-a very distant cousin, if you go by blood only-but his family and mine grew up like brothers and sisters. The mailman had delivered mama's magazine to his house and he was returning it. I introduced him to Kelsey and he explained that we were cousins because mamas' great grandmother- and his, were sisters. The beauty of that sunk in- how the many generations had remained a unit. I thought about the sisters tending their children and wondered if they would have believed that more than one hundred years and six generations, later their descendants would still share life together. "Blessed be the tie that binds!"

    Kelsey told a story, after he left, that moved me and I hope to never forget. It seems that she and Tres, on the way to her birthday celebration, came across an accident, that had just happened. There was a cloud, that prevented them from seeing the bus at first. Tres got out and ran to the scene. It was tragic. He went to work pulling a team of young boys to safety and told Kelsey not to get out of the car. I will not record the sorrows he bore witness to. It pains me greatly, for everyone involved.

    We do the best we can by our children. They grow up and we pray for their journey. It is not our own, and it takes a considerable amount of fortitude to accomplish that realisation. Sometimes, they become devoted mothers and sometimes they write songs. They may buy shoes for poor children or buy food for hungry animals. They run trucks in ditches and every one of them have been responsible for some amount of worry -but they are our most beloved... and which ever the present case may be, they are our "pride and joy".