Part 1

If it would have happened today she probably would have spent her life in prison, but back then things were different. Then again maybe that is where she spent her life, in prison.

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"People were different back then," that is what she would tell us. "We had to work hard for everything we had. Nothing was ever just handed to us." Maybe if you close your eyes you can hear her leathery voice and see the twinkle in her aged eyes as she takes us back to a different world. We can sit at her knee as she paints pictures of the past. She could tell us of her seven mile walk uphill and barefoot just to get to school. We could listen, enthralled at every word as she tells of her tedious chores on the farm. And we would patiently smile as she gaffed at our "computers and play stations" "Why, when I was your age" is how the stories would always start.

She might have said those things but more than likely she would have told us to stop bothering her. She didn't have time for such nonsense and why talk about things that were already in the past? She would then draw her lips in a thin straight line and stare out the window. What is she thinking when she stares outside? Does she really see the trees or instead does she see into a past that her lips refuse to talk about?