Life History

Eighty-five.  It was 1985 when I first started working at Hollins.  I was out looking for a job, friend of mine said, “I know where to go!” and he brought me down here, and I got the job.
            You know, a lot has changed since I came to Hollins, ‘cause when I came, I came in ‘85, I only had been here a few months before the flood just wiped everything out.  I remember, me and my husband was coming to work, we only had to work eleven to seven then.  There was so much water in the road; I’m going like, “Let’s turn back around and go home.”  And he’s going like, “We can’t do that.”  And my husband was the type of person, he was dedicated to his job.  He was very dedicated.  I mean, anybody that was here that knew anyone, they knew Wilbur.  He was always here.  And I’ll never forget when they finally told us to get the you-know-what out of this dining hall because of the rising water, my pocketbook was downstairs in the locker.  And I went downstairs, the bottom had filled with water.  And I’m going like, “No . . . No . . . that pocketbook is going to stay right where it is.”  It’s a good thing I got my rain coat, ‘cause I woulda been without a coat, or anything.
            I’ll never forget, my husband took—we were married then, but he was going like, “Give me your rain coat.”  I gave him my rain coat, I put his jacket on, and the steps . . . water was at the top of the steps.  And he was gonna canoe, trying to bring food from the dining room over.  And I‘ll never forget looking over—cars, all you saw was the tops of cars out here, that’s how high the water was.  All you saw was the tops of the cars, you know?  It was wild.  People standing over there in West, on that little porch, watching Wilbur canoe food over to the other side, over there where the porch is, right there . . . and you know. 
            It was just wild.  I stayed here all day long; I was never so glad to get home.  All the water.  And I mean, they still have pictures of outside, where the bookstore was.  You know, they just—all of the books, and everything, and when they finally got the dining room straight we had to run the shelves from the old library.  We had an assembly line of just moving the shelves out and over here, they were piled up outside, and then we had to move them inside . . . like, this was the dish room, the old dish room, and we had to send ‘em through the window, send ‘em through.  And I’ll never forget—we did the last one, me and Jackie was in the dish room, and it was a wonderful thing.  We finally got all that books and shelves washed.  So much mud.
            It was Election Day that it happened.  The flood, I’ll never forget it, was on Election Day.  And the Roanoke City kids weren’t in school, they was home from school that day.  Election Day.  I think it was the first of December, a couple weeks before Christmas, before they opened again.  They’d closed.  They were trying to get all that time back that they’d lost, you know, during the flood.  We was—we stayed open late, we worked late hours . . . it was just unbelievable.  But I don’t think there were any dorms that were damaged.  I think the only building that was really damaged was these three.  The old library, Dana, and Moody.  I can’t remember anything else, ‘cause I guess I just, like, stayed in this vicinity, I couldn’t see anything else . . . But it was something else. 
            Then the blizzard came in—what was it, what was the year of the blizzard . . . Seventeen inches of snow.  And I stayed here the whole weekend, I stayed in Randolph.  There was only two people that showed up for work Saturday and Sunday.  I was one, and a line girl came on Saturday, and another line girl came on Sunday.  We was the only three that came, other than the managers.  Brad was the catering manager then, he got snow plows to bring him in.  (laughs)  So it was just . . . I can remember some things here, but I think those were the worst two things that I can remember, as far as weather-wise.  That kept me stuck here.
            I know a lot of students by name, and I try to interact with everybody, you know?  Like, Reedy, and Miss Dee, I think they interact with more of the students because they work on the line, they—and I do what I do.  And I don’t see a problem.  I mean, I think it’s good.  In ways.  In some ways, you know.  I mean, when somebody comes in and not speaks, it’s just . . . you can always say good morning, hello . . . you can always speak, it don’t hurt you to speak to anybody.  But, you know, I think we all can learn a lot from each other.  I think we can all learn a lot from each other.  I tell my son, he’s the youngest one at the house, and he’s going all the time about old people.  I said to him, “You can learn a lot,” and he said, “Mom, I’m learning too much.”  (laughs)  “Them old people are gonna get me in trouble.”  But I think it’s good.  I think it’s good.  ‘Cause you can always learn something new, and I don’t see anything wrong with it.  Socially, I think you have your limitations.  But on a day-to-day basis, I think that we can all learn a lot from each other.  So I think it’s a good thing.
            I left Hollins in ’98, and I came back in 2000.  Both of my children—my daughter has Hershbrung’s disease and my son was diagnosed with kidney disease, so I wanted to get them both in the same place, you know.  They were both needing surgery, and when I first found out about my son being sick, and my daughter was already sick, it just—the stress from it all, and I said I couldn’t deal with this anymore and try to deal with them too.
            I actually started working again, at my second job, and then my sister had her own daycare, and since I wasn’t working she was going like, “Okay, well if you’re not going to work there,” so I went and helped her out for a little while.  So I worked with the daycare kids, and then I said, “Okay, time to go back out into the work force,” so I started working at Golden Corral.  I think I worked there about eight months.  But then I got tired of that, so I said, “Okay, I’m through with y’all for a minute.”  It got to the time where Terrel started getting really sick, so I had to take more time off from work, going back and forth to UVA. That’s when I quit Golden Corral.  If there’s one thing I hate from a job it’s to say they want you to choose between working and your child being sick.  So you know which one I chose.  And they put the choice to me.  I was going to keep running down to UVA with my son or come to work. Toodles!  Goodbye! (laughs)  Toodles! 
            It was difficult at first.  But to see both my children—my daughter had an eliostomy—and to see both my children you wouldn’t believe they were actually sick with any kind of illness.  They got good attitudes, you know, self esteem.  They’re not depressed or anything.  They laugh, and my son is just the practical joker of the family.  He’s always doing something to play a practical joke, so he’s in very good spirits.  I think I’m pretty blessed to see both of my kids in good spirits, even though they’ve had to go through a whole lot.  My son has been having surgery every month since December.  He’s had at least one surgery every month, and you know, he’s going like, “Ma, I just—”  He said, “Ma, I know it’s hard.  I know it’s hard.  But I know it’s something I gotta do.” 
            So I quit my work.  And that would be the same as here, you know.  If they told me, “Shelly, you’re taking too much time off, you know, because of your son,” then I would have to leave.  I’m not going to do that.  I don’t think that’s a choice you should have to make.  I’m sorry.  I know what comes first.  And plus, I still did my cakes, and I did a lot of decorating, birthday cakes; it was like everybody just took the time and said, “Okay, Shelly can bake cakes now.”
            I don’t know how that got started.  And actually, I get a lot of business.  You know, away from here.  Do a lot of weddings.  I have three weddings this summer.  We started just doing something for his cousin.  Church.  We did dinner for three days, and since then we have just been booming, with people just calling, and . . . It’s just a blessing, Lord have mercy.  I wanted to get a part-time job and there it goes, right there.  And I don’t ever even have to leave home. 
            And I do enjoy cooking, you know?  And me and my son, we’ve thought about it and talked about it, and we’re trying to get into this school.  His doctor said, you know, he’s eighteen years old, you know, he needs to be doing something.  So we’re going to culinary school, hopefully, in September.  We’re going to Stratford University.  It’s in Falls Church.  We decided we’re gonna go there and get our culinary licenses.  Both of us together.  Our initial thing was that his doctor was saying that he needs a kidney now, and they’re not doing anything fast enough here, in Roanoke.  We already know where he’s going to go, we have the dialysis center.  There’s actually two transplant centers, there’s one in Georgetown University and then there’s one at University of Maryland.  We’re just trying to figure out right now which one is closer to my sister, ‘cause we don’t want to have to travel far, you know?  And once I get there I don’t want to have to travel forty-five minutes to get to the doctor, ‘cause she lives in the suburbs, she lives on the outside of town.  But the dialysis center’s only like five minutes from her house, so we decided to do that.  Terrel and I have already applied at Stratford University, and I think we’re just waiting on financial papers so we can get some financial aid for the both of us, so we can go. 
            I was talking to my sister, and in the wake of everything going on with September 11th, she said people are just giving away kidneys now and I’m going, like, “Are you serious?”  But you’d be surprised at what’s going on.  So we’re going to take him up to Georgetown University Hospital this weekend—next weekend, when we get off, and see if we can get him on the transplant list up there.  I want him to go to college so bad.  He needs to get out and do something ‘cause he does nothing but sleep all day right now.  (laughs)
            We’re gonna try to get everything situated—we’re gonna try to work our schedule around his dialysis days.  I mean, I don’t know if they’re going to change his days once we move there, or what.  But for as long as it takes, I’m gonna take the time off at Hollins to do it.  I’m hoping that I can do it.  If I can’t, I’m still going, regardless of whether I come back to Hollins or not.  I don’t know yet exactly how long the program is.  I don’t even know how long it’s going to take us to get through it, with TJ being sick.  We still want to make sure that he doesn’t miss any hours, if he’s gonna need some time off.  We wanna get him a kidney as soon as possible, you know, and up there they say it’s just so much faster to get a transplant than it is here. 
            They haven’t even got him on the waiting list here yet.  So, you know, he can get on the waiting list much quicker there than he would here.  And I’m just gonna take that opportunity, get all my information that I need, so we can go and do this.  I’m wanting him to get on with his life.  I don’t want to see him, you know, fifteen years down the road, still on dialysis.  He’s too young for that.  So we want to have him get a transplant so he can get on with his life.  ‘Cause he’s so young. 
            Me and my husband talked about it.  I told him, I said, “It’ll be like me and TJ are going off to college.  We’ll be home on spring break, Christmas, Thanksgiving, we’re coming home.”  He’s going to stay here and keep the house so we have a place to live when we get back.  ‘Cause I don’t wanna—you know, I thought about that thing, and I’m going, “If me and TJ go I’m gonna have to move out of my apartment,” ‘cause I know I couldn’t afford to keep an apartment here plus live there all the time, so . . . I told my husband.  Me and my husband talked about it, we said, “Well, if we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it like this, and it’s going to be like me and TJ going off to school.”  And we’ll be home, you know, spring break . . . for the holidays.  And he said, “Okay!”  He said, “Well, we can do that.”  So that’s what we’re gonna do.  I hope.  I hope. 
            My son thinks it’s cool, me and him going to school together.  (laughs)  He really do.  “Ma,” he said, “you know, it’s going to be so much fun.”  He said, “Can I call you Shelly?”  I said, “No, you call me Ma.”  He said, “Ma, they’re going to think I’m showing favoritism.”  I said, “Boy, you’re a mess.”
            Cooking is my favorite job.  My first job, I was sixteen years old and I worked at an athletic club in Columbus, Ohio.  I moved up there . . . oh, God, I was a senior in high school when I lived up there.  I moved up there with my father.  And my first job was the Columbus Athletic Club, downtown.  It was wild . . . And then after that I came back here.  All the other jobs I’ve had was here!  (laughs)  I’ve been here so long, you know.  Other than this, I worked at Golden Corral for about eight months, and I liked—I got to meet a lot of people, you know.  I work at a convenience store part-time, in the evenings, and you know you meet a lot of people there.  But other than that, this is really only the really permanent job I’ve ever had.  It’s not like I ever went from job to job.  I got this one and stuck with it.
            I’m a teenage mother, as you know.  When I got pregnant with my daughter, my mom, I guess she was a single mom then, because she and my father had gone their separate ways . . . but me and my brother, we used to always go with my father in the summertime, and when I got pregnant, well, my aunt was a little—she was always on my mom; she thinks it’s a bad thing to be pregnant and not have someone.  She kinda got it in my mom’s head, like, “You’re gonna be stuck with that baby!  And she’s gonna go about her business!”  So my mom was kinda scared, and she was going like, she didn’t wanna—my mom couldn’t face the idea of being a grandmother before she turned forty.  And I, myself, I’m not forty yet and I’m a grandma, and I love it.  I love it.  My grandmother, she got to see my grandson.  And like I said, you have to see each of those.  So when I told my father I was pregnant, he said, okay.  And I told him my mom wanted to put me in a girl’s home.  I’ll never forget, my aunt had talked my mom into putting me into this girl’s home.  And Daddy was like, “No.  Uh-uh.  You’re not gonna do that.  You just come on and live with me.”  And that’s how I got there.  And I actually lived with my aunt more than I did with Dad.  (laughs)  I stayed with her most of the time.  We were always doing something; I was out with her every day.  So I just kind of moved in with her. 
            We’re originally from Lynchburg, Virginia. That’s where we originated from.  My father’s job moved him here to Roanoke when I was six years old.  So I’ve been in Roanoke since I was little.  About thirty-three years now.  My grandfather, my mother’s father, was a mailman, and actually my grandmother cooked at a junior high school when I was coming up.  And my father’s parents, my father’s father was deceased when I was born, so I never knew him.  And my grandmother, she worked, and she actually worked at a kitchen too!  I mean, it’s like all down the line, you know?  I guess it skipped one, ‘cause between my brother and myself and the grandparents, our grandparents were cooks.  Both of our grandmothers.
            I like to cook.  I love my job.  Some of the people I could particularly do without, but other than that I really do like my job.  I like the fact that Mr. Rowan gave me the opportunity to learn, and advance myself, and to learn to do more things, anything that has to do with cooking—if there was a class I wanted to take that had to do with cooking, he would see to it that I could do it.  Take time off work to attend the classes.  I took Wilkes cake-decorating class, learned how to decorate cakes and stuff, so it really did give me the opportunity to advance myself.  I just wish there was a culinary school nearby, ‘cause I would be going.  Just to get that piece of paper.  You know, that piece of paper means a whole lot.  Makes a lot of difference, although I know how to do the work.  It’s just that paper that just says so much more.  (laughs) 
            I think experience is more than anything, other than teaching it.  Chef Howie was chef here, when I first came, and he taught me a lot.  He taught me a lot about baking cakes, doing breads and things from scratch, so I learned a lot from him.  Cookie dough from scratch—‘cause we used to do that when I first worked here.  A lot of stuff came from scratch.  Breads was made from scratch, the cakes—some cakes he made from scratch.  Cookie dough, the big cookies you used to get in the snack bar, that you get in the snackbar—they used to be made from scratch.  Now a lot of stuff has become pre-packaged and ready to go.  It’s all ready now.  But when I first worked here, I mean, it was wonderful.  Everything.  We didn’t have a lot of the frozen items that we do now.  Me and my husband do a lot of catering, too, on the side.  So a lot of times I may have another dinner I’m doing tonight, or something. 
            Me and my kids like to take fun days, so to speak.  Go out to Chuckie Cheese.  My grandson loves Chuckie Cheese.  We might go out to Chuckie Cheese and spend a day out there.  And my son likes to travel.  When they were younger, when we went out on Thanksgiving or Christmas Break or Spring Break, we would always plan a trip, that Friday.  We would always plan to go and stay somewhere for that weekend, to my sister’s or my brother’s house, or my aunt’s house in Hampton.  I don’t get to much now because Terrel can’t travel as much, you know, with dialysis. 
            My daughter has two kids, Marquel and DeKala.  She works right up here at Hollins Manor.  She’s a CNA.  She’s working on getting her LPN.  So her illness hasn’t stopped her either.  She even had a baby after she had the eliostomy.  We were wondering about that.  But she went through it fine. She wants to get into the medical profession.  She really wants to be a OBGYN.  Right now she’s a . . . uh, I forgot the name, but I’m going to tell you . . . she’s a medicine—they call her the Medicine Lady at work. (laughs)  She’s actually the nurse that gives out the meds at the nursing home.  So she’s the Medicine Lady right now.  So she’s into it, I just want her to go back to school and finish, you know?  And get her LPN, REL, whatever she wants to be, I want her to go back to school and get it.  Although she’s taking some classes now that’s in her field, so you know.  I just really want her to go ahead and get her degree, or get somewhere where she’s stable.  ‘Cause like I said, you know, she’s very intelligent, and I hate to see her waste, you know, her mind on little things, you know, when she could do so much better.  But, oh, that’s my best friend.  That’s my sister.  I mean, people don’t think that we’re mother and daughter, they think we’re more like sisters.  It’s cool.  I love it.  And it’s always, “Mom, can I have . . . Mom, can I do . . .”  We’re just like that.  And my grandson, he’s saying, “Well, if you’re gonna get my Mama, can I have two?” 
            But I really would like to see her do something better, you know?  Other than being . . . what she does.  ‘Cause I mean, it’s not—it’s a job, you know, and I guess it pays the bills, which is mainly what you wanna do.  But she can do so much better.  She don’t have to struggle.  Right now she’s struggling.  She needs to get to a point where she don’t have to struggle.  And, you know, it’s hard.  I wanna see my grandson, you know, do something.  I want him to have, you know, the opportunity to do whatever he wants to do also.  He wants to be a fire-policeman.  He don’t say “a fireman,” he says “the fire-police.”  He wants to be a fireman.  I have two grandkids.  Between my husband and myself, I think it’s like nineteen.  It’s ‘cause between my husband’s kids and my kids we got nine altogether.  He was married before me, and this was my first marriage.  And the girls did not get along.  (laughs)  I’m telling you, the girls did not get along.  My son, he was laidback, cool, they didn’t bother him.  But the girls didn’t get along at all, ‘cause he had three daughters that used to come and stay with us a lot.  And my daughter, she was headstrong and mouthy.  (laughs)  Can’t nobody tell her what to do.  So it was kind of a conflict when they came over; sometimes I had to take my kids to my mama’s to keep down the conflict.  ‘Cause I’m going like, “I do not feel like—”  They would call me here on Saturdays like, “Ma, Ma, Ma,” so I said, “I am not going to do this, you’re going to your grandma’s.”  So we would have to separate ‘em—before the evening was out, we always had to separate ‘em.
            But now, I mean, I don’t see his kids much, and I think he—(laughs) he spends more time with mine than he do his own, so . . . that’s the way it’s always been, people have trouble about their stepmoms.  I do too.  I got a stepmom, but she didn’t do anything to me, so I kinda understand how they feel, but also, I know how my stepmother would have felt if—you know.  But we get along well.
            There’s one silly family tradition that I’m going to tell you about.  My father started this one and my children still do it.  Whenever The Wizard of Oz came on TV, we had banana pudding.  And that was like a tradition in our house—we had to have banana pudding for dessert.  So every time The Wizard of Oz comes on, now, to this day, everybody got to have banana pudding.  (laughs)  So there was just those silly traditions we used to have.  Most of the older generation is gone, so all the stuff that we did when we were little, we don’t do anymore.  Everybody’s grown up, gone their separate ways, and scattered all over the country.  It was always Thanksgiving at my grandmother’s house, my father’s mother’s house, and Christmas dinner at my mother’s mother’s house.  But then my mother’s mother, she passed away when I was small, so that cut that tradition out.  We got stuff from my mom, so we just started staying at home.  But Thanksgiving we always used to go to my grandma’s house, my dad’s mom’s house.  Yeah.  That was one tradition we always had.  She had seven boys.  So can you imagine, seven boys with all their children.  I think we have the biggest family; there’s four of us, and we’re the oldest, ‘cause my father is the oldest in his family.  So there’d be all the grandkids, there’d be like thirty children running around, through the house and all over the place.  And Grandma, she’d be, “Oh, come on, Butterball, you gotta be first.”  I miss those days sometimes.
            I can’t think of anything that really affected me.  I guess . . . I guess it was when my uncle died.  We were really close.  I used to go stay with him all the time.  He was—he never married, he lived by himself.  And I think that, that, did more to me than anything else.  We were best friends.  He was my best friend.  Every time I needed something I’d talk to him.  I could always go talk to Uncle Eddie, and he’d make it all right.  If I needed anything, I knew I could get it from him.  I was spoiled rotten; I was the oldest girl. 
            He passed away seven years ago, because it was before Marquel was born.  About seven years ago.  And you know, I knew it.  I knew it.  I had a feeling.  ‘Cause I had dreamed about him this particular Friday night, and that Saturday morning my sister came over and she said, “Oh, I got some news for you,” and I said, “What?” and she said, “Uncle Ed’s dead.”  And I’m going like, I just dreamed about him!  You know?  And in the dream, he told me that everything was going to be all right.  And he said, “Don’t you worry, ‘cause everything’s going to be all right.”  And he said, “I don’t want you to cry,” and I’m going like, “Cry for what?”  I was having this dream, and it was so real.  It was like he came to me in a dream and told me that everything was going to be all right.  I know he’s better off, ‘cause he was real sick then.
            He was just so . . . he was mentally retarded, you know.  My mom said he had more common sense than anybody.  (laughs)  He did, ‘cause you know, he was just . . . he just taught me so much.  And he knew so much.  And like I said, he was—I don’t know the technical term for what he had these days, but back in the old days, before our time, long before our time, anybody that couldn’t learn was called a moron.  And I guess when he was coming up, back in the fifties and early sixties, he was considered a moron ‘cause he couldn’t learn. 
            And he was retarded, but I didn’t think of him that way.  I never did.  Even though I knew it, mentally, I just didn’t feel like that about him.  He was just so wonderful to me.  He taught me a lot about—well, he taught me how to cook, really.  He would always get in the kitchen and cook, you know, ‘cause he lived by himself at the time, so he taught me a lot about cooking, and a lot about a car, and . . . I didn’t really want to know about a car, but he could tell you anything about a car.  He couldn’t drive, but he loved cars.  He bought a car—couldn’t drive it, but (laughs) he bought a car because he liked it.  But Uncle Ed . . . oh.  I remember when we were really little, there was a bar right around the corner from my mother’s house, when me and my brother were little.  My father was the oldest, so me and my brother are the oldest grandchildren, so it was just the two of us.  I’ll never forget, my uncle used to take us to the bar, and we’d sit at the bar, and the man would give us little drinks.  We had to go with them everywhere, since they were the babysitters. 
            But he was just . . . he would cuss you out in a heartbeat.  (laughs)  He would really lay you out in a heartbeat, so . . . he always tried to tell his brothers what to do.  He was the oldest, and it was just like he was the oldest.  He was the daddy, since my grandfather died before I was born.  So he was the one home all the time; he just kind of took over everything.  The house, you know.  My grandmother worked, she had seven boys, and he was the only one at home.  He just walked, would walk us everywhere, tell us about landmarks . . . there was a train that went by our grandmother’s house, right behind there, and you could hear the trains going, and he would tell us about the trains, where they were going, and what kind of train it was, and where it was made . . . he knew so much.  We just didn’t understand, we were going, like, “How does he know all of this?” 
            You do wonder, somebody who didn’t go to school, that was incapable of learning, but knew a lot of stuff.  There’s a national landmark that was right up the street, it’s an all-girl’s school, I can’t think of the name of it.  But it’s a private school, it’s not too far up, just up at the next block, I can’t remember the name of it—he used to tell us about the girls who went there, and we’re going, like, “How do you know all of this?  You don’t ever go nowhere.  I could tell you a whole lot you don’t know.”  But he was just that type of person.  And I told my mama, I said, “Who deemed him to be a moron?”  My mama said, she said, “Shelly, I don’t know.”  “Well, why’d they call him one then?”  You know?  “Where do they get this ‘moron’ from?  ‘Cause he’s not a moron.”  She said, “Shelly, you know, back in the day, that’s just how they labeled him.  They said they didn’t want to teach him.”  And I think that was wrong, but you gotta think, back in those days, he couldn’t go to school.  Like, now, they don’t say somebody is incapable of learning.  They’ll find somebody that’ll teach them.  But back then, they didn’t have that, so . . . he learned street-wise.  (laughs)  He learned street-wise.  But he knew a lot.  He was very smart.  A car, he could tear it apart and put it back together again.  And to think, they deemed him unable to learn.  And that’s sad, when you think about that.  That’s really sad.  If you thought about it now these days, I think that somebody would have a lawsuit on their hands or something.  
            We spent a lot of summers with him, because both of my parents worked . . . my father’s job, he traveled a lot, so him and my mom got to see a lot of things, and they were always going on vacation, and my father was an insurance salesman, and he went on a lot of trips.  He and my mom used to go places, on cruises, all the time.  My father had one for best salesmen.  We spent a lot of time with him, ‘cause we spent a lot of summers at our grandmother’s house.  I guess that’s—history repeats itself; you send the kids somewhere ‘cause you’re out doing something, and that’s just the way God . . . (laughs) ‘Cause my daughter, if something good happens to her I gotta go tell Uncle Jamie.  That’s my brother.  ‘Cause she spent a lot of time with him, and I guess he done spoiled her, and Uncle Ed spoiled me just like my brother spoiled my daughter.  We just got to spend time with them. 
            I, personally, I will not tell anybody I raised my kids by myself.  I’m the oldest girl—I have an older brother, but between me and my siblings, I’m the oldest girl and I have two younger sisters, so they all helped me raise my kids.  And I know my youngest sister, she’s only ten years older than my daughter, but she still helped me raise them, and they’re crazy about her today.  When they want something it’s, “Go see Auntie Kim, go at your Auntie Kim,” you know.  So I didn’t do it by myself.  And obviously Wilbur helped.  But Wilbur’s more close with my son, you know, boys, and now they are just too close.  (laughs)  And I keep my grandson sometimes.  So, I mean, a lot of people can’t say that, but when I’ve made decisions about my children, it’s not something that I have to do on my own.  It’s a family meeting when it comes to my kids.  And my kids are always going, “Why are we always”—and I’m going, “You gotta understand, they helped me raise y’all.”  My one sister, she was the clothes lady.  She was Miss Fashion Bug.  And she dressed my daughter.  I never—my daughter was going into kindergarten, and I didn’t have to buy her clothes, ‘cause my sister got all her clothes.  She dressed the both of them for school, so that was just a blessing. 
            I just can’t say no more.  Summertime I didn’t have to worry about a babysitter, ‘cause one of my sisters or brothers took my kids for the summer so I wouldn’t have to worry about a babysitter.  They didn’t have to worry about being at home.  So my kids got to do a lot of things most kids don’t do.  They went to camps, all the museums and stuff, that my sister—they always had something planned for them.  When they moved to DC, that’s where my sister’s living now, when they went there they always had something for them to do on Saturday’s, take ‘em to some museum, or anything that was going on for the weekend that they could learn from—she always did that with ‘em.
            My brother, he got my kids into doing a lot of sports, and stuff, so they were always doing something.  And every Saturday him and his boys do something together, you know, like our family day.  We do something.  That’s the way it’s always been, so I never had to worry about that.  I never tell anybody—because if I’d had to’ve been here, and they’d had to be home alone, you know, kids get into a lot of stuff.  I can only imagine.  I’m so glad.  It’s hard, trying to find something for them to do, to occupy their minds.  So while you’re off doing something else, not having to worry about what they’re doing was pretty good.
            I guess those are the biggest things in my life right now.  They take up a lot of my time. I just want to hurry up and get along with doing school and stuff.  My son, actually, he said, “Mom, you’ve been out of school for 25 years.  Do you really think you can get back into it again?”  I say, “Yeah, you know, I think it’s easy to do.”  That’s the main thing I want to do, just get him motivated into doing something.  And once I get him out of the way, I guess I’ll be all right.

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