"Sister's" and my brothers

 Mac picked me up in his truck today, to meet William for lunch .

 "Where are we going?" I asked.

"Sister's."

"In Quitman?" There's a great family buffet in Quitman called Sister's.

"No, on West Hill Avenue.  Sister's Pizza and Mussels.  Susan and I go there all the time."

I'd never even heard of it, but, man, was the food good.  I cannot wait to go back and take Jimmy. He will love it. It's kind of a dive, near where the old bait shop is/was. Mac got the baked ziti and William and I got mussels with home

baked bread to sop up the juice. 

It was fun watching the guy behind the counter making pizza crusts.

he'd pummel it around

then spin it high into the air, just like they do in the movies

When I turned around to snap their picture, William took it like a man, but Mac obstinately ( he's been known to be obstinate- and obstreperous) refused to look at the camera.  "Oh, good," I said. "I've got a great shot of that thinning spot on the back of your head."  Mac retaliated by confiscating my phone and putting it in his pocket.  He wouldn't give it back until we left the restaurant.

I love my brothers.

My earliest memory is of when Mac was born.  I was 20 months old and have questioned whether I really remember it, but it is so vivid that I know I do, which is weird because my short-term memory has gotten so bad.

Mac was born on Thanksgiving, and this had to have been a few days after that.  In those days, mothers stayed in the hospital for two weeks after giving birth, unlike now, when they chuck you out the door before you can hardly catch your breath.

I remember Daddy holding me in his arms out on the sidewalk, and Mama waving to me from a second story window of the Little-Griffin hospital.  It was a bright clear cold day and it must have been mid-afternoon because the sun was in my eyes.

When Mama and Mac came home from the hospital, there was a lot of discussion about what to call the baby.  Of course, his name was Berkley Moreland Mackey III, but they couldn't decide whether to call him Chip or Bubba or Mac.  I was dead set on Bubba and adamantly called him that for the longest time, before finally capitulating and addressing him as Mac like the rest of the world.

My name was supposed to be Berkley III, according to Mama.  Daddy was so convinced of his firstborn being a boy, they didn't have a girl's name picked out, and I went nameless for about two weeks.  They settled on Dorothy, after Mama, and mulled over Ann for a while, as a middle name.  Daddy finally came up with Ellen, because he liked Scarlett O'Hara's mother, Ellen O'Hara, in Gone With The Wind. By the time he'd recovered from my not being a boy (Mama said he had a bad case of the "dry-grins"), he liked me a lot, too.

And that's all I'm going to say about that.  For now. I have some good stuff about William, but I'll save it for later.