Kith & Kin

On Saturdays male college students left campus in abundance. Some went to the mall. Some went home. And some of us who needed cash went to work for the good folks in the local community. It was on one such Saturday that I found myself at Mrs. White’s, along with a fellow college student named Phil. We rode there in Phil’s rattle-trap car, parked, got out, slammed the doors, and walked to the front door of a rambling white house with dark blue shutters. Wisteria grew profusely on a trellis to the left of the door, draping it in purple, and a hulking magnolia tree grew on the right, fully in bloom and fragrant. Phil knocked, and when the door opened, a tiny former Southern Belle with completely white hair welcomed us. It was Mrs. White. She must have at least been in her seventies, and you could tell she had always been happy and honest of soul, two traits that had given her a grandmotherly glow from within. We stepped just inside the door, and she introduced us to her son, Plato (yes, “...

  AI art by Copilot This is the end of the story. Mom and Dad came in the door, and Keith and I ran to Mom and hugged her. She was finally home from the hospital, where she’d been for a long time because there was something wrong with her heart. Suddenly we were all three crying—I’d never been so happy that I cried before. Keith and I pointed at each other and laughed and cried at the same time and hugged Mom for a long time. And this is the rest of the story. It was an afternoon in 1967. I was at my pastor’s house, and his wife, Mrs. Wilkin, was babysitting me. Every day for a few days—a week or more?—I was to walk up the village’s north hill to her house after morning kindergarten to stay with her . . .  because my mom was in the hospital. Mrs. Wilkin was a nice lady. I remember her as being tall (but all adults were tall), not heavy, and with dark hair. I remember learning to play pick-up sticks while I was with her, and I remember her giving me my first paying job....

Cousins on a summer day at the grandparents ’  house. My brother Keith is on the far left, and our cousin Scott is next to him. I ’ m next, standing with my arm around Scott. Loren is the tall kid in the middle with the New Mexico T-shirt on, and his sister Robin is right beside him. I never told anybody this before, but I had a crush on Robin — I think you can see why! I recently received a text from my brother Eric: “Just got word from cousin Robin that Aunt Karon died on June 1.” That was only three days ago. She was 86 years old. Aunt Karon was the fourth child born to my grandfather Weston Skaggs . Born in 1937, she was the family’s only girl. Her older half-brothers were Leo, Eddie, and my dad, Nyle. Weston’s first wife, Eva, passed away fifteen days after my dad was born; Grandpa remarried, and he and his second wife—we called her Buddy —had just one child, Audris Karon. Dad was born in 1936, so he and Karon were close in age. But I never heard him talk about their ch...

Times Square. ( Creative Commons License , Terabass ) As Milton and I came up the subway steps into Times Square, my head seemed to whirl. It was my first time to New York City, and even though I was almost fifty years old, I was extremely excited. And coming out of that subway into the lights and sounds and smells and people and traffic, I was overwhelmed. I loved it. I was very grateful that Milton was with me on this business trip, because he had been to NYC a number of times before. When I told him, after observing the traffic madness, that I would never, ever drive in the city, he told me of the time when he was a teacher and had taken a group of students to one of the museums. Because he was the bus driver, the students and the other teachers had gone into the museum while Milton—long-suffering, patient Milton—had spent the afternoon circling the building in the bus because there was nowhere to park. Around and around and around in that horrible traffic for hours. I said...