Marion and I are on our way to help a friend of hers pack up for moving day. Miss Carole lives at the local independent living facility in Palmetto. At 82, her back is not what it used to be, so us two young folks are going to help ease the load.

“How do you know Miss Carole?”

I find myself asking Marion questions like this all the time. To be associated with her is to be immersed into the world of Palmetto, which I find extremely interesting because it reminds me so much of the Hampton I remember from years ago.

Even the scenery is similar. Store fronts on one side of the highway. Railroad tracks across the road. A church steeple or two standing above the roof tops. A grocery store. Hardware store. Gas station. Each one bearing the name of a Palmetto family. Church ladies who taught everyone’s children in third grade. Old mill houses full of cousins, in-laws, and outlaws who know you and all of your family’s history.

Palmetto is the cultural bridge between the rural life of south Fulton County and the big city of Newnan in Coweta County. Today much of the rural life has been invaded by the bigger city of Atlanta to the north. A lot has changed. The old Post Office is now the Dollar General. Bradley’s is now the Piggly Wiggly. But the Palmetto of old lives on in the stories of those left to tell them.

Miss Carole entered Marion’s life in 1987. Mike came home from the fire department and announced that he had found them a house to buy. They were in their mid-twenties. Both working. One child under foot. Getting out of the small duplex seemed like the right thing to do.

Mr. JD and Miss Carole were selling their house. “They’re good people,” Mike said.

Mike had gone through school with their kids. He was a native son of Palmetto. Part of the pack of kids who ran from house to house in the summer and came home just in time for supper. Marion is always saying that she married into Palmetto.

We walk down the hallway to Miss Carole’s apartment and knock on the door. From inside we hear a “come in.” Miss Carole stands from her chair in the living room. She’s well dressed for the day. Slacks and a blouse. Earrings. Snow white hair cropped short. A hint of makeup.

“Oh honey, it’s so good to see you.”

She and Marion hug like family at Christmas. She takes my hand and firmly holds on to it.

“I know all about you,” she says to me. “I’m so glad to finally meet you.”

From the first time these two met, Miss Carole welcomed Marion into the arms of the Palmetto community. We’re packing kitchen wares and pantry goods into boxes, and the two of them are catching up on the latest news and walking through the memories of the life and times they have shared.

Miss Carole is not moving far. A new apartment just around the corner to the next wing of the building. With every five or six boxes, Marion and I wheel a loaded cart down the hallway and back.

Miss Carole married into Palmetto herself. Single with one child. Mr. JD, widowed at 37, ten years older than her.

“I wasn’t going to get married again. One bad marriage is enough,” she says. “I agreed to meet JD, but I told him not to expect anything out of it. Four months later we got married.”

At 27 she instantly became a mother to five children, not just her one. She set the tone when she told each of them that there would be no “step” names in this family. “I may not be your real mama,” she told them. “But I’m your heart mama.”

And that was enough.

It wasn’t enough for everyone from JD’s family. One in particular couldn’t bear the death of JD’s first wife and made it clear that she wouldn’t accept Carole. It was unfair. It was unjust. But it made Carole reach deep. She was determined to live her life with JD with a joy that could not be snuffed out by bitterness.

Marion and I have stopped packing boxes at this point. The conversation is personal. Unexpected. I look at Marion and her eyes are red around the edges. She, even after more than 40 years of friendship, is hearing stories that she has never heard before.

Carole was in her early 40s when two significant things happened. A certain family member came to her and asked for forgiveness. Years of unkindness. Things that bordered on meanness. And Miss Carole told her that she had forgiven her a long time ago. There was nothing left to forgive.

The other remarkable thing. Carole asked her children if it would be okay with them if she were to adopt them. These kids were grown men and women by now. They thought on it, and they all agreed that they would love to be adopted.

So here they are, Carole and JD and all the “kids” sitting in the judge’s chambers. The judge takes his seat and asks where the adoptees are for this meeting. The grown folks across the desk raise their hands. “No,” he says, “I mean the children.” They all raise their hands again.

It was the first time in all his years on the bench that this judge had overseen such an adoption. Why now? JD had adopted Carole’s daughter the first year they were married. What difference would it make at this point to go through with a second adoption.

“Because they were my kids and I loved them.”

Carole didn’t say those exact words to us, but I could tell from her story that this was reason enough.

I admire my new friend. She took a chance on life and chose the courage to face it. She made a lot of sacrifices. She crossed over a lot of hurdles. She carried every burden well. And, it seems to me, she made something quite remarkable of her life in Palmetto.

One more thing. I’m more connected to Miss Carole than just my sympathy for a good small town story.

Her maiden name is Barnette. Her grandfather ended his signature with a squiggle on the end that looked like an “e” and it stuck. But the original was Barnett. Then, come to find out her dad was a cousin to my Uncle Doyle Barnett.

Talk about connections. Evidently, her dad also dated my Aunt Francis (Chappell) before she became a Foster. Carole also graduated high school with my cousin Don Foster. Her family knew and visited often with both the Foster and Barnett clans of my family back in her growing up days.

So, I’m packing boxes for a total stranger who happens to be secondarily related to me. We both have family buried at the Mt. Carmel cemetery in Hampton. Through Marion and her 40-year friendship, I get the opportunity to hear her story. To find a past I did not know. To make a connection I could not have seen.

I’m still shaking my head.

A random Friday in Palmetto, Georgia?

I think not.