[Janeytwo]

I am also thinking of my Sister Susie. There are times when I wish I could change her but I suppose what would be the point? I'd have to bend into twisted shapes to do it. When/if she's ever ready to throw in the towel against the poverty that binds her and shaped us; then maybe I can walk with her. But change her.......I doubt it...

I often ask myself what she's doing in my life; what lesson I'm meant to learn from her. She is foreign to me. It's strange the people she surrounds herself with. They make her crazy. She picks the sterling whites; that's what I call them. Those people who's parents were blue-collar here, standing on the line, wearing steel-toed workboots and blue uniforms and coming home smelling like factories.

Some are proud of that legacy but some? Shoot they're the sterling whites running from their ancestry like horses from a barn fire. They seem ashamed of their parents' legacy (thought I don't know why) and so they buy $400,000 homes with ceramic foyers and marble-top metal hallway tables and tell themselves they're really from Grosse Pointe instead of Eastpointe(East Detroit) or whatever the frig lower-middle class City borders 8 Mile. They can't get past their lower class status and they're running themselves into the ground financially trying to cure their own shame.

When I say I am white trash, I say it without pride or without shame. It is what it is. No one's going to be inviting me to the Country Club anytime soon. So what? Sister Susie can't admit that and I think it's killing her soul.

And I guess I should say this. THere's nothing wrong with coming from poverty and making something of your life. Heck no! But if you forget where you're from - no matter where that is - you lose something vital.

And Sister Susie - she's working hard at forgetting. She's working too hard; surrounding herself with people who wouldn't buy toilet paper unless it had the Vanderbilt seal of approval.

In the end (pun intended) TP only has a couple uses. None of them are pretty. Well...unless you're making pom-poms for a just married sign.........