What we remember

If you look at my business card or my front yard, you will know what I remember. I was born in Louisville, KY on a street called Rose Drive. When I was born my grandmother, Coy Lee Oakes, one of the 12 children of Mary Elizabeth Kessler and Wakefield Burris, planted a rose bush under the window where I would be sleeping. It was a cluster rose called The Seven Sisters and it grew to six or seven feet high. In the warm summer, that bush would blossom and the whole house would smell like the Sisters. My grandmother was killed by a drunk driver as she was trying to cross Preston Highway to come home. My Daddy, Estil Adkins, tried to transplant the rose bush along the fence on his property. Now, my Dad could make anything grow, but the Sisters died within a few short weeks. Many would say transplant shock, but I knew the bush needed my Big Mom's hands to keep it flourishing. As I grew, small mementos of roses kept pushing into my life--from perfume to delicate embroidery. Jermaine Jackson and Hazel Gordy brought me Rose perfume in the hospital, my boyfriend had a wonderful rose based perfume created for me. My French hankerchiefs have roses of many colors. I have six sets of English bone china that have roses, Daltons' Old Country Roses, Midnight Rose, Tea Roses among them. My business card has the MacIntosh Rose on it. My yard is filled with two dozen rose bushes of varying breeds and colors. Although I have looked for 30 years, I've never found the Seven Sisters cluster rose. Just remembering the sweet smells of my Grandmother on this warm summer day, I'm Ruth Adkins Robinson.