laura hough smith

My mom had seven brothers and sisters – four boys and four girls. I’ve always loved that the genders were evenly divided, and earlier this month my oldest aunt told me how she and the oldest brother teased one another every time my granny was expecting.
My aunt Detsel said she and Bloyce would taunt one another.
“Oh this one’s going to be a girl,” she’d say. “She’ll be on my side.”
She was thrilled when three girls were born consecutively, but two baby boys eventually evened the score.
The lineup in the family ultimately became boy, girl, boy, girl, girl, girl, boy, boy. In birth order they are: Bloyce, Detsel, Jimmy, Shelia, Karen, Robin, Curtis and Dennis.
The siblings are thick as thieves; there are disagreements, frustrations and political differences, but there are no falling outs. They all have settled within miles of each other, and most live only a mile or two of their childhood home.
A few weeks ago, I was sick and required a hospital stay. One aunt, Karen, was already here, by the grace of God; the other two made it here in short order.
An outsider to our family wondered why it took all three to take care of me.
Here’s why:
One year, my mom, Robin, was too sick to go Christmas shopping in Memphis with her sisters, but I was desperately homesick and begged her to go. I didn’t want to go if she wasn’t; no one did.
Urging me to meet her sisters in Memphis, without her, she said, “Go anyway. They’re just as good as me.”
She was right. It is through my aunts that I still see, hear and feel my mama.
In my family, we were raised so closely with our extended relations that cousins passed for brothers and sisters. As I began writing this column, I sent out a group text message, asking them to help me describe “the aunts.”
My aunt, Detsel, is the mommy and is known as Muz.  The cards I gave her as a little girl were always addressed to “my second mom.” She’s probably the most like my mom; they’re similar in stature and temperament and shared a remarkable talent in sewing.
My cousin, Jeff, is Shelia’s son. He said through weed-eating Muz’s flowerbed, he learned that a job worth doing was worth doing right.
But Jeff described her character best with this: “I once locked her in the shed behind our house, and she still hasn’t paid me back.”
Muz is the best substitute for hugs in my mother’s absence. She will baby you, let you cry and sing to you — even though time hasn’t improved her singing voice.
Leah is her daughter, and she said, “My mom, without a doubt, lives for and feels purpose in each child! She loves them like her own and because of that, this only child has had siblings.”
The next girl is Shelia, she’s the doer. Her children are Chris and Jeff, and she has gobs of biological, adopted and foster grandchildren. If she is at any house for any length of time, it will be cleaned. During the five days she spent at my house, she dusted the bricks, wiped down the baseboards and shampooed a rug on her hands and knees.
She never stops; she is always doing something, Leah said, adding, “She serves Jesus by serving others.”
At her house growing up, we rode four-wheelers, go-carts and mini-motorcycles. She had a machine that made soft drinks, and she lived on the only hill in Southeast Missouri, Crowley’s Ridge; It is perfect for sledding.
All the fun belies an incredibly strong parent, though. She is strict; her youngest son, Jeff, is the cousin closest to me in age. He was perpetually grounded. Always. Their parenting worked though; both her sons are preachers and wonderful fathers.
“I used to think it was awful she spanked her boys so much!” Leah wrote. “The same boys she would run across to our house if they were bleeding!”
Karen is the next girl and closest to my mom in age. She is the hippy who’s been sober for 30 years.
I once asked her if she’d been a real hippy. Her answer still makes us laugh: “I was the best hippy I could be for Matthews, Missouri, when you’re dad’s the town marshall.”
I love that she is profoundly spiritual, but practical at the same time.
My sister, Morgan, described her this way: “Karen answers the hard questions. The way I could count on mom to sugar coat things I can count on Karen to give it to me straight.”
Karen and I see signs in everything. She believes, as do I, that angels are among us. We have the best deep talks.
She’s also the photographer of the family, having documented so many of our childhoods in cotton fields.
All of the aunts are quasi-hoarders; Karen hoards photographs and books, and during a recent cleaning, she discovered half a dozen unfinished scrapbooks for most of the great-grandchildren.
None of us grandchildren have a favorite aunt, and when one is needed, any one of them will do.
But to get all three together is the best blessing, as I was so lucky to have had recently.
This is how Jeff put it,  “While I loved each of them separately and uniquely for their individual attributes it was when they were all together that I enjoyed them the most — the way they would laugh together, get mad at each other, and get over it.”
He said the strength of their sisterhood is shown best when friends of his watch how we interact and observe that we act more like brothers and sisters than cousins.
My cousins and I sent a flurry of messages back and forth that day, and most everyone had cried at some point. Jeff thanked me sarcastically, saying he wouldn’t be able to leave the office until he dried his eyes.
But at the end of the day I kept going back to the first comment in my text message poll from my cousin, Jody, who responded from his backhoe somewhere outside D.C.
“Mom (Karen) is great; Shelia is good; and Muz is crazy. Robin just splendid.”

© Laura Hough Smith and laurahoughsmith, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Laura Hough Smith and laurahoughsmith with appropriate and specific direction to the original conte