Several months before I realized my grandmother was dying, she gave me a Ziploc bag of some family photos (both black and white and color), along with,  a strand of long brownish, reddish hair that had been braided.  With the hair, was a note written in my grandmother’s handwriting “Mama Wright’s hair.” Mama Wright was my grandmother’s grandmother.  In other words, the braided hair belonged to my great-great grandmother.  My grandmother never knew her mother. Ola Mae had died when my grandmother was only 2. My grandmother did know Mama Wright, Ola Mae’s mother.

I love researching our family’s history so I treasure this piece of hair, even though, I have to admit I can see where it does seem a bit odd to have a strand of someone’s hair.  I can’t help but wonder how old Mama Wright was when she cut this piece of hair? How did my grandmother end up with it? Also, how did it not get thrown away or lost and end up with me after all of these years?

The strand is long and the braids remind me of tiny links to the past. Mama Wright’s name was Zaddie. I am not quite sure on the spelling because on the back of some of her pictures there are different spellings. I wish I had a picture of her when her hair was the color of the braided strand.  The pictures I have are of an older Zaddie who lost a child (Ola Mae was only 27), lived long enough to have a TV (I saw it behind her in a picture), and still lives on through a single piece of hair that her now great-great granddaughter has.

Part of why I am here and who I am is in that strand of braided hair.

Mama Wright’s hair with two photos (the one with the TV and another with her husband Lewis in front of the “oldest and largest” cypress in Florida in 1954). I would love to know what they were doing in Florida. I’d like to think that they had worked hard and earned enough money to finally take a vacation. I also would love to know who took the photo.