{"id":16949,"date":"2014-01-30T00:01:55","date_gmt":"2014-01-30T08:01:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/barbarafalconernewhall.com\/?p=16949"},"modified":"2014-01-30T00:01:55","modified_gmt":"2014-01-30T08:01:55","slug":"my-mothers-magical-babushka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/my-mothers-magical-babushka\/","title":{"rendered":"Little Girl Lost — My Mother’s Magical Babushka"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a><\/div>\n
A downtown Detroit street corner, 1942, showing Kern’s department store — in<\/div>\n
summer. Public domain via Wikipedia Commons<\/em><\/div>\n
\n

 <\/p>\n

By Barbara Falconer Newhall<\/em><\/p>\n

When I was three or four years old, my mother took me shopping in a big department store in downtown Detroit<\/a>.\u00a0 Crowley’s, Kern’s, Hudson’s? I can’t remember.<\/p>\n

I do remember that the\u00a0 ceilings were high, and that the dark, worn wooden floors creaked under my feet. Shoppers crowded the aisles. Their coats smelled of wool dampened by melted snow. Brown and black boots and purses pressed at me from every direction. In time, my mother and I got separated and I found myself alone.<\/p>\n

An alert saleswoman saw my plight. \u201cAre you lost?\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\"Tinka<\/a>
My mother in the 1940s. c Photo by DB Falconer<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I nodded. \u201cI can\u2019t find my mommy.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, then. How about if I lift you up on a counter so you can see the whole store? Then you can look for your mommy.\u201d<\/p>\n

Holding my hand, the clerk pushed a path for us through the throng of shoppers. When we reached a sales table, she put her hands under my armpits and lifted me up until my feet rested on the edge of the merchandise bin.<\/p>\n

\u201cDon\u2019t worry,\u201d she said, her hands at my waist now. \u201cI won\u2019t let you fall.\u201d<\/p>\n

Shoppers bumped and jostled us from all around. I tried to balance my stiff, leather-soled shoes on the edge of the bin so that my feet wouldn\u2019t slip into it and soil the nice new things for sale \u2013 ladies\u2019 gloves, perhaps, or nylon stockings in pretty, slender boxes, or tissue-thin white handkerchiefs. But I couldn\u2019t keep my feet steady, and they wobbled into the merchandise. The clerk didn\u2019t seem to mind.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s your mother wearing?\u201d she asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cA yellow babushka.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnything else? A coat? What color is her coat?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know. The babushka is yellow.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLook around for the babushka then,\u201d said the clerk. \u201cCan you see it from here?\u201d<\/p>\n

My mother had been wearing that yellow scarf all winter, and I couldn\u2019t see the point of it. It was a triangular, crocheted thing that went over her head and tied in a half-knot under her chin. It had big gaps, holes, between its soft strands of crocheted yellow cotton. If I wanted, I could slip two or three fingers through the holes in that babushka without stretching or hurting the strands one bit. I wondered why my mother would wear something that was mostly holes and not very much babushka. It wouldn\u2019t keep the cold off her ears. Yet I loved that babushka, because it was my mother\u2019s and she wore it.<\/p>\n

Now, standing in the bin of ladies\u2019 gloves, the nice clerk steadying me, I could see the point of such a head covering. The store was large, dark and crowded<\/a> with shoppers, but I could spot the babushka. There it was. Over there at the other end of the store, its soft, golden yellow light glinting at me from afar. Scores of shoppers were standing and milling about over there, their heads tilted down toward the bins of merchandise, while the yellow babushka moved purposefully along the dark, paneled wall.<\/p>\n

I wondered what my mother was doing way over there when I was here. Here! But I wasn\u2019t afraid. I had the yellow babushka firmly in view and the nice salesclerk at my back.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere she is.\u201d I pointed in my mother\u2019s direction.<\/p>\n

\u201cOh, yes. I see,\u201d the salesclerk said. She lifted me down from the bin and led me off in the direction of my mother.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t remember pushing through the crowd, and I don\u2019t remember the reunion with my mother. But I do remember, and I like to recall from time to time, that spot of yellow bobbing against the store\u2019s dark walls, surrounded by the heads of strangers, scores of them, and the knowledge that I was, and had been, and always would be, safe.<\/p>\n

More stories about my mother at “My Mother’s Goneness”<\/a>\u00a0 and “A Manners-Challenged Kid Who Became the Apple of His Grandma’s Eye.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"facade<\/a><\/p>\n

When I was three or four years old, my mother took me shopping at a big department store in downtown Detroit. It might have been Crowley’s or Kern’s or Hudson’s. Shoppers crowded the aisles and soon, my mother and I got separated and I found myself alone. Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":5376,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[1145,1146,571,1147,1148,34,1149,1150,1151,435,1152,1055,510],"class_list":["post-16949","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-changing-family","tag-1940s","tag-babushka","tag-daughters","tag-department-stores","tag-detroit","tag-dont-miss","tag-hudsons","tag-kerns-department-store","tag-lost-child","tag-mother","tag-parenting","tag-shopper-barb","tag-tinka"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16949","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16949\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}