Despite the Sandstorm
People Are STILL Having Sex e1s1
Jacquita grew up in West Texas during the dust bowl. When the winds came her mother directed the many children to fill the cracks with clothes and sheets and towels. The storms rained piercing sand. Afterward the rooms would be filled with dirt. Food came irregularly. In the interim the family would tighten their belts. The presence of the man who fathered the children was more scarce than was food.
Later, between 15 and 17 years old, Jacquita finished high school and moved to Austin to attend secretarial school. She lived in one room in a boarding house. She ate everyday: one banana, one bowl of soup, a piece of toast. Jacquita finished school and found work.

Here she is sometime in her late teens or early 20s. Details of her early independence in Austin are incomplete for me, a few photos and the notes above.

This is Jacquita at her wedding. She was 24; to her family already a spinster. John is holding her hand, many years her senior. She had known him perhaps from work. They lived in a small house near Hyde Park. They moved to Fort Worth. Had two daughters.
Her daughters had children. John passed away. Jacquita traveled the world, gardened, antiqued, volunteered in church, battled the squirrels that besieged her pecan tree.
At 85 Jacquita left her third house for a retirement community. She found new life in her bones. Her friends were there, her church across the street. There were dances. There were men. Younger men, in their 70s, who wanted to dance with Jacquita.
The younger men were clumsy, and danced too slowly. John had been a wonderful dancer.
Jacquita passed in August, shy of 100.

Here is my grandmother in her later years, ever tough, stubbornly optimistic, joyful, stern.
Sometimes stealing food from friends’ trays at lunch.
