{"id":48353,"date":"2017-02-09T00:01:52","date_gmt":"2017-02-09T08:01:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.katefox.biz\/newhall\/?p=14"},"modified":"2017-02-09T00:01:52","modified_gmt":"2017-02-09T08:01:52","slug":"lost-child","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/lost-child\/","title":{"rendered":"A Lost Child in Wartime Detroit — A Headscarf Story"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/div>\n
\"the<\/a>
I was a lost child in a dark and cavernous department store like this one in downtown Detroit. The store might have been Crowley’s, shown here in 1910 when it was still Blackwell’s. Photo Courtesy Library of Congress. Author Detroit Publishing Company.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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

When I was a little kid, three or four years old, during World War II, my mother had a yellow babushka. That’s what we called headscarves in Michigan, back in the ’40s. Babushkas.<\/p>\n

My mother wore\u00a0that yellow scarf whenever she went out into the winter cold, but 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.<\/p>\n

If I wanted, I could slip two or three fingers through the holes in that babushka without stretching or hurting the strands. I wondered why my mother would wear something that was mostly holes<\/a> 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 because she wore it.<\/p>\n

She was wearing that babushka the day she took me shopping in a big department store in downtown Detroit. Maybe it was Kern’s. Maybe it was Crowley’s. The ceilings were high in that store, and 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.<\/p>\n

A Lost Child . . .<\/h5>\n

In time, my mother and I got separated and I found myself alone. Forlorn and small, I was jostled by the indifferent crowd. Did I cry? I don’t remember. What I do remember is the\u00a0alert saleswoman who could recognize a lost child when she saw one.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
Tinka Falconer in summer.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cAre you lost?\u201d she said.<\/p>\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 crowded all around us. 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 dirty up\u00a0the nice new things for sale \u2013 ladies\u2019 gloves, perhaps, or nylon stockings in 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

Standing in the bin of ladies\u2019 gloves, the nice clerk steadying me, I could see the point of my mother’s holey head scarf. The store was large, dark and crowded with shoppers, but I could spot the babushka. There it was. Over there at the other end of the store, its soft, golden light glinting at me from afar.<\/p>\n

Scores of shoppers were standing and milling about over there, their heads tilted down toward the bins of merchandise. The head in the yellow babushka remained upright, moving purposefully along the dark, paneled wall.<\/p>\n

What was\u00a0my mother doing way over there?\u00a0I 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

\u00a0. . . Lost Child Found<\/h5>\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 wintry day in wartime Detroit, and 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 about my maternal ancestors at “My Long-Lost Dead Ancestors — I Found Them in a Parking Lot.”<\/a>\u00a0 More about World War II at “A POW’s Story.”<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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

I couldn’t see the point of my mother’s skimpy yellow babushka — until the day I found myself a lost child in a cavernous Detroit department store. Read more.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26409,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30,13],"tags":[1146,1846,1148,34,1151,214,573,55,1546,510,167],"class_list":["post-48353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-my-changing-family","category-my-rocky-spiritual-journey","tag-babushka","tag-department-store","tag-detroit","tag-dont-miss","tag-lost-child","tag-michigan","tag-mothers","tag-family-stories","tag-shopping-adventures","tag-tinka","tag-world-war-ii"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48353","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=48353"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48353\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/server.stagingweb3.net\/barbarafalconernewhall\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}