Light to the Hills

by Bonnie Blaylock

A person’s name carried everything. In closed rural communities like those in the Appalachian hills, a name was a placard identifying your people and your past and, more often than not, charting your future.

Sometimes the good Lord sees fit to perch folks on the branches that require an extra measure of our grace. Sometimes those folks is us. Guess we all take turns.”

A warm bath, a good cry, and a cup of tea: her mother used to say that was close as you could get to the Holy Trinity here on Earth.