Growing up in Alabama in the fifties, and being from a large family (eight boys and seven girls), my sisters and I were very close. We shared everything and fighting with each other wasn’t allowed, our parents were strict about that.

We all grew up, got married, some moved away to other states, some stayed but moved to a different town, but some stayed right there in the place where we grew up.

We all had our own families and our own responsibilities, we didn’t see each other as much as we would have liked. So we started a tradition, every year around the thanksgiving and christmas holidays we would get together for dinner at one of our homes, just us sisters.

We each would bring a small gift to the hostess, which ever one of us  it was, We’d walk in the house to the smell of good food cooking on the stove, and a warm fire, we were so happy to see each other.

We’d gather a the dinner table, give thanks to God for the food, and for letting us be together for another year, we would laugh and talk for hours about the times when we were kids and all together under one roof.(the good old days) we called them. we talked about things and people in our lives that we loved that made our  lives happy and sometimes sad.

After dinner we would all clean up, say our goodbyes and disperse to our separate homes and lives.

It’s been almost ten years since we last gathered at the dinner table of my youngest sister Rita, she passed away in June 2000, she spent the last year of her life fighting lung cancer.

My third older sister Flora (tootsie) we called her passed away in april 2005, from breast cancer.

I miss those dinners with my sisters; at some point we had planned to include our brothers we never got around to it. I see my other sisters now and then, but it will never be the same. We formed a special sisterly bond all those years when we gathered lovingly; at the dinner table.