Aletha would spend her life traveling with a performance group, otherwise known as her family. Her big, thunderously loud family. Her heavy European accent came through heavily and about her every 5th word was understandable English.
She’d been born to a (thunderously loud) traveling family. The family had never put roots down anywhere and so Aletha didn’t know any different. She was by all accounts a sad girl who did what she was told; sometimes it was performing and sometimes it was working the crowd and sometimes it would be both.
Her family brought all of their possessions with them including performance needs like tents, stage, costumes and souvenirs to sell. Aletha had been allowed one small suitcase of personal items. It held a few special books, a mirror, hairbrush, a change of clothes and two pieces of artisan jewelry.
The jewelry had been given to her by her father. She treasured the pieces that she’d been told came from at least 3 generations back. She had wondered many times as she tried on the pieces – a necklace and bracelet, not matching – what relative wore them years ago. She used her little hand mirror to see how they looked and each time she imagined she lived somewhere else except nowhere.
She imagined that in another time she was a girl with a stable family with roots.
A home not on wheels and a kitchen with a fire not on the ground. She wished for more possessions and a wardrobe chest in which to keep them. She longed to have a friend her age with interests outside her own. Oh, the number of times she wished for a friend her age to talk to about books and boys and anything but where their next performance was and how many nights they would stay.
Then one day she overheard her mother talking about her childhood and it sounded very much like her own. She never truly connected her and her mother’s experience before that day. She learned her mother had the same desire for stability for a time but later in life she realized that the world was her home. The gift that each town gave her was acceptance and a new beginning.
Aletha learned her mother, at each performance, played any person she wanted to be and eventually she settled on the woman she became. A loving, caring, vivacious, wife and mother who was also an artist and performer with a sense of humor. She had a passion for learning about other people and about the world. Her mother provided Aletha a great gift.
The world was her home and provided her roots.
Written by Julia Roberts, Kidneys and Eyes
