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At Sisters' Reunion in Bowie, Memories of Lipstick and Love
Christy Burdette, left, Theresa Woodruff, Carol Comlish, Marti Wallen, Laurie Thomas and Jean Scanlan toast their mother at her grave.
(Photos By Bill O'leary -- The Washington Post)
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"And she took out all stitches because we didn't have medical insurance to pay to go the doctor for things like that," Comlish said.
Now, with comfortable lives, they recall the closeness that those difficult days engendered. At 13, Tess became pregnant and was sent to live with her father in St. Louis. Forty-one years later, the son she gave up for adoption found her and has become part of her life.
The sisters talk frequently and visit each other often. They refer to themselves as "the upper three" -- the older sisters -- and "the lower three."
"Everything is three and three with us," Wallen said. "Blood type, those who use ice and those who don't, those who choose paper bags over plastic in the grocery store and those who don't, who has a college education and who drinks with a straw and who doesn't."
The sisters planned today, the last day of their reunion, to revisit their old home near Georgia Avenue and Kennedy Street NW and one in the 5400 block of Illinois Avenue NW. They also want to visit a Northwest Safeway store that they used to walk to with their mother before the family moved to Bowie in 1965.
Sitting on the deck of Wallen's home overlooking the Chesapeake Bay on Friday afternoon, the sisters discussed plans to give each other facials, play bocce ball, take dance lessons from Thomas and watch movies.
"When we all get together and talk about our mother, share our childhood again and our lives . . . there is a sort of wholeness that we get that takes us out of our separateness," Burdette said. "We feel that there is an entity that originated from where we came from, and our mother, and it takes on a life of its own."
They're talking about writing a book about it.
The tentative title, in honor of their mother: "Don't Forget Your Lipstick."
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