Category Archives: Family matters

In which we discuss matters of the family.

Family matters

Busia

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Rockford’s grandmother started sending me obituaries in 2007. I’d been reading “The Dead Beat: Lost Souls, Lucky Stiffs, and the Perverse Pleasures of Obituaries” at her house, and we’d talked about how fascinating those brief biographies could be. She clipped obits from the Washington Post and sent them to me for years after that conversation.

She was thoughtful like that.

She renewed our subscription to Smithsonian magazine every year, and she used to send my sister-in-law $5 at the start of each Vidalia onion season so she could treat herself to a tomato and onion sandwich.

She was whip-smart, she was dignified, and she had impeccable manners. I was intimidated the first time I met her. Not physically — although most of her children and grandchildren are from my vantage point very tall, she didn’t tower over me — but she had a Presence. Being around her felt like what I imagine being around Maya Angelou feels like.

She knew Rockford loved her cinnamon applesauce, so she made sure she always had a fresh batch when he visited. She welcomed most of the staff of our college newspaper into her house one year when we went to D.C. for a conference. She’d stocked the house with all sorts of treats before we arrived.

She was kind and generous like that.

She was a kindergarten teacher. She loved her family fiercely. She loved to read, she was devout and active in her church, and she was always learning new things.

She passed away on Saturday. I’ll miss her.

busia

Bandwagons, Kids are weird

Shadows

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“Mama!” he calls. He’s only been in bed for a few minutes, so I figure it’s a call for water.

“What’s up, buddy?” I ask him. He’s sitting up in bed, firmly clutching White Blankie.

“I saw a big flash of light through my window,” he says. “It went like, ‘Wha-oooom!’ ”

“Really? I didn’t see anything at all!” And I would’ve from where I’d been sitting in the living room, with its windows pretty much perpendicular to his. “Maybe it was Daddy turning the lights on in the living room. Want me to go flip them on and off so you can see if that was it?”

He likes that idea, so I sally forth with our experiment.

“Nope,” he says. “That wasn’t it. And I wasn’t imagining it! Really!”

“I’m sure you weren’t,” I say, “but I just don’t know what it might have been. Keep an eye out and tell me if you see it again, OK?”

I tuck him in again and go back to the living room. I pull the computer back to my lap, and in the time it takes Facebook to load he’s calling to me again.

“Mama? Come in here,” he says. “I saw something strange.”

“Yes?”

“Sometimes I wake up and I see shadows outside my window that look like people in the backyard, and I know there aren’t people in the backyard, but they look like people,” he says casually, as if he hasn’t just said something that gave his mother the heebie-jeebies, the willies and a great amount of botheration all rolled up in one creepy package. “That’s when I come into your room, ’cause I get scared.”

“Nope,” I say, pulling his curtains closed and trying to sound confident. “There are definitely not people in the backyard. Now try to go to sleep.”

Again I tuck him in, again I sit down, again he calls.

“But Mama,” he says. “I still see the shadows that look like people.”

“It’s just the shadows from the tree branches, honey. That’s all.”

“Oh,” he says. “Well, all clear, then.”

And I tuck him in, and I go back to my chair, and I try not to look out the windows. All clear, right? All clear.

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