Seth's first Christmas

From an old diary: 

January 1, 1974 
It was a perfect Christmas with Ouija, though I thought the bus ride would never end. Seth vomited in northern Alabama, and we reeked of vomit through the rest of Alabama and into Georgia, and through the long layover at the Greyhound station in Atlanta. Then we reeked through South Carolina and on into North Carolina. The bus was crowded with other people going home for Christmas, and I had to change his diapers in my lap, which added to the fragrance of my clothes. Finally after a day, an endless night, and a morning on the bus, we arrived in Hendersonville, and there was Ouija, waiting to drive us to her little house on the hill, still hauling on the steering wheel of the lumbering 1952 Buick I learned to drive in. She was all a-dither with a Christmas tree, decorations, and a small turkey she’d overcooked till it was withered and dry. She fluttered around us with nervous excitement, a good woman to the bone, pure love and welcome. She had crocheted me a pink, blue, and yellow toilet-paper cover and a matching doily to put on the back of the toilet. On her tiny widow’s pension it was the best she could do for a gift, and afford a turkey too, and I was touched by her labor. Even as I enjoyed her, I missed my Granddaddy. He would have clucked his tongue in that way I knew so well and put a comforting arm around me, and I could have leaned into him and smelled again the mixture of Old Spice after-shave and Chesterfield cigarettes. I wanted to tell him, “Look, you have a great-grandson. Isn’t he perfect? Isn’t he the most beautiful baby you ever saw?” He would have beamed at me and looked proud. Ouija had to do the beaming for both of them.


She was then the age I am now, and I come by my inadequate cooking skills naturally. She modeled for me how to live in gratitude despite genteel poverty, and that has come in handy, though I never learned to crochet.