My Brave Little Taylor

My brave little Taylor, I depended on him for everything.

When my second was born, my brave little Taylor was the one who helped.

When I needed diapers my brave little Taylor would run and get me one.

I had gone Christmas shopping Christmas Eve in Muscle Shoals with my husband and in-laws when I started having labor pains, we were on Veterans drive near Holiday Inn where now is Hampton Inn when I had my first labor pain.

That night we gave my brave little Taylor his Christmas a big red wagon.

Early the next morning we went to the hospital where my second son was born at 7:27 AM.

We lived with my in-laws after my second son was born until we moved into our house in February of the following years.

We slept on the fold-out sofa, the living room and kitchen have connected no walls between them.

My mother-in-law worked at Genesco and so did my husband. 

Every morning my mother-in-law would cook biscuits and gravy and put on a pot of coffee, I hated the taste of coffee and the smell made me sick.

My mother-in-law always cooked a large meal for Sunday dinner, she always cooked a pot of white beans, sometimes peas, always some kind of meat, most of her cooking was done on Saturday so all she had to do was warm up the food.

My in-laws only had two children, my husband, and his sister.

Every Sunday everyone would gather at my in-laws for Sunday dinner after church, which ended at 11AM.

This ritual went on for many years until she got Alzheimer's disease.

While we were sitting at one of those Sunday dinners, my husband and I got into an argument.
We were still arguing as we got into the car and left, as we approached the pine thicket hill, I became so enraged that I said I was getting out of the car, my sister was visiting with us, she was sitting in the middle of the car seat between me and my husband. 

I opened the car door and started to get out when he speeds up, I was hanging onto the car door being dragged. My dress was ripped off, with gravel in my arm which left a scar and I was a few months pregnant with the second son.

In later years my mother-in-law cooked breakfast and sometimes supper for my middle son when he moved his trailer alongside the creek bank which was across the road from her house.

His dog Pat Mae stayed at her house every day after my son went to work and my mother-in-law would feed her.

In the afternoons Pat Mae waited patiently on her porch until she heard my son's car coming down the road, it was like she knew how to tell time.

Pat Mae would take out running to greet my son as he drove into his driveway.

Pat Mae was born before April 2002 she lived over thirteen years.

My father-in-law died on April 2005 and his wife lived several years in their home alone.

My mother-in-law was taken to Lauderdale Christian Nursing Home where she lived many years until her death in 2012.