Cannie

I was born at the Golden Place, high on Ammons Mountain, the first child of Cannie Owen Ammons. I was delivered by Retter, my grandmother. Growing up in the mountains—the only blinking lights the fireflies that appeared just at twilight—I did not know I was poor. I did not know the dark places of the world. I did not know the fast pace consuming most of its people. The beauty of the mountains satisfied my hunger and my thirst and clothed my back. With certainty I knew there was something special about my family; I knew there was something special in my surroundings. When I began to put down on paper the stories that had to come, I once again discovered these special feelings. Why? I wondered. Why did I know there was something special I had to say?

And then I discovered my mother’s diary!

She had given it to her sister who, upon hearing I was writing about Mother, in turn gave it to me. Some of the pages were missing, the rest were yellow and tattered; but I now possessed two years of my mother’s thoughts about her early life. Highly sensitive and intelligent, Mother had the ability to express her feelings eloquently about growing up in the mountains, marrying at age fifteen, and having a child at sixteen. And then, suddenly, in the pages of her diary, I discovered why I must tell Cannie’s story.