My Extraordinary Ordinary Life (19 page)

I inherited my strawberry blond hair from my grandmother. After T. Holl moved the family to the wild Rio Grande Valley, where bandits roamed the border, Elizabeth insisted they get a house in town.

T. Holl and Elizabeth with four of their five children (my mother is the baby).

My grandfather, Thomas Holliday “T. Holl” Spilman, married Elizabeth Holliday, the granddaughter of his namesake.

That’s my mother, Virginia, with my grandfather in front of their “in town” house in Mission, Texas.

They lived out their lives in threadbare gentility.

My mother in grade school in Mission. I think she looks like Scout in
To Kill a Mockingbird
.

Here she is a teenager with
Screenland
magazine.

Virginia Spilman, known as “Gin,” must have dreamed of the life she helped me live.

My aunt Arlette and my mother in the 1940s. When I was very young, Arlette and I had a standoff over a plate of Christmas cookies. I won.

An all-American family in the 1950s. Little did we know then that tragedy would change all of our lives.

Here I’m checking to see if a stick of gum I’d put in Robbie’s pocket for safekeeping is still safe.

Mother loved to dress us in sailor suits. Years later I tried out for
Carrie
in a sailor dress she made for me in seventh grade.

Ed, Robbie, and me in front of our house in Quitman, Texas. It must be Sunday because I’m wearing shoes.