Matriarch

She carried her family like she carried her hair--big and high. They all had her eyes and her sense of style.

The first may have been genetic but she trained the second in the same way she trained them to leave their shoes at the front door, to answer the phone, and to say the right things.

"Honey, now don't go airing our dirty laundry in public," she said. Her daughter was visiting with a friend and asked how long exactly their great great uncle had been imprisoned for the bank hold-up. Her friend didn't believe that bank hold-ups were real.

Her daughter was 8 at the time. Now she has children of her own.

She once told me she loved the way I could just put my hair up and go. I think love is her own way of pity, though. And her daughter will never go out without mascara and she will never date a guy whose mother will just put her hair up and go.