Learning to Pray by K. Denise Holmberg
My Dad was eight-months old, balanced on my Aunt Vinita’s hip, and playing with a pocket watch that belonged to his father who had passed away. Vinita had been crying. There had been only two eggs to eat that day and she had burned them. There were so many mouths to feed … three sisters and four brothers. Plus mom, who was looking so thin and tired, but still managed a smile and said, “I’m not hungry anyway, Nita. You kids share the potatoes, I’ll be alright.” Mom had been walking around the mountains selling boxwood plants that she grew on their little farm in “the gulf”, the northern, lower edge of the Great Smoky Mountains. Usually trading one of her plants for an egg or two, a loaf of bread, maybe a few vegetables from someone’s garden. Life had always been a struggle, but now it was becoming desperate. My Aunt Callie was the eldest. She was sixteen and determined to help her mother and siblings. So she set off, by herself, and walked out of the mountains all the w