Flossie

When I was very young my mother had someone take care of me and do the cleaning around the house while she was at work.   The term back then wasn't, "nanny" or "au pair".  I don't even remember what my mother used to refer to her by, but I remember her name was Flossie.  She was with me for many years.

She was an African American woman who lived in the downtown area of our city.  She didn't have a car, so each and every week day she would take the bus (or possibly multiple busses) to get to our house.   I remember her being larger in size and very kindly.   She mostly stopped sitting for me when I got to school-age but she continued to clean for us for some number of years.

At some point she was having a harder time cleaning due to age.   My mother was trying to stick it out with her but she wasn't able to clean well, missing lots of areas because of her failing sight.   My mother had decided she was going to have to say something and coincidence would have it that Flossie came to her and told her she didn't thing she could continue to clean any more.

That ended the business relationship between my family and Flossie, but my mother never forgot her.  For years afterwards, my mother would take a trip out to Flossie's small home and visit with her, talking about her grandchildren and what was happening in her life.  My mother would collect nice  pieces of large, costume jewelry from yard sales and bring it to Flossie as a gift.   Mom said Flossie loved to wear extravagant jewelry.

My mother took me to visit her once when she was quite old.   She looked different I remembered, sitting very still and looking rather crumpled on her sofa.  But she was happy to see me and we had a nice chat that day.   My mother told me she died some time later.   I have happy memories of her from my childhood.   She was one of the people in my life that helped to raise me—and yet, I don't even know her last name.

The Big Boy Update:  My son and his two friends, Ryan and Keira, want to climb into our Chinese Fringe tree quite badly.   They spent forty-five minutes the other day working on strategies, trying and failing at several alternatives and ultimately not making it to the first (and really only climbable) branches.  It's not a big tree, but for some reason they want to climb it.   They tied two graduation tassels to the lower branches, moving the dog's stool out into the back yard and tying one end of a string onto the leaves of a nearby bush.   But the teamwork and problem-solving they did to get there was a victory as far as I'm concerned.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:   There was wind the other day...lots of wind.  I was moving things around in the kitchen and out to the refrigerator in the garage and my daughter was playing with their outdoor things around the two cars.   Every time the wind would blow the garage doors would do a huge creaking sound.   My daughter wanted to know what in the world that sound was, looking at me with surprised and possibly frightened eyes.   I told her that was the wind on the garage doors and that it sounded like some fun weather was coming.   She wasn't completely sure about my assessment but after that every time the doors creaked she'd inform me the wind was blowing again.