Home Always Smells Sweetest

I am the youngest of the Wise Girls, three well-behaved, stair-step sisters who spoke when spoken to, and practiced good Southern manners.  I just started school and longed to lay beneath Leslie’s ironing board in our den, where I would feel an occasional cool splash from the water bottle with a sprinkle head, and smell the wonderful warmness of hot iron on damp cotton.  Leslie would rock her oversized body and sing gospel songs in a deep round earthy voice that could only belong to a big, sweet black woman who loved Jesus and "her babies."  These are my most pleasant memories of the sweetest sounds and smells on earth.