My Guardians

Home from spending last night and today at my mother's house to give access to workers doing repairs on her flood damaged home and wanted to quickly recount two episodes before I forget.

My mother has a large (2'x3') framed photograph of my great-grandparents, my uncle Rousas at about age 9 and my grandmother at about age 7 (my uncle Haig hadn't been born). This picture was on the floor, leaning up against a small ledge behind the TV and out of sight.

Bit managed to crawl over there, find the picture, stood up and began eagerly kissing the faces of my Great-Grandmother Rushdoony and my grandmother. My mom called me over to see it. She ignored my uncle Rousas (he was a piece of work, but that is for another time) and my Great-Grandpa Bodvelli (the only one of my maternal great grandparents who I didn't have a personal relationship with as he died before I was born). I sat with my daughter while my mother watched and told her who the people were in the photo and a few stories about them.

When Bit and I got home about an hour ago, I changed her diaper, put on her pajamas and settled down with her to give her a bottle before bed. I tend to bury my nose in her hair when we nurse (yes, though I bottle feed, it is *still* nursing) and I started at the scent in her hair. It was my grandmother's scent. She had a very particular smell, of jasmine, roses and some unknown spice. It is a unique and unmistakable aroma. Nothing else smells like it. In the ten years since her death, I have smelled it at strange times, but I always know that she has been with me. Tonight, she came to my daughter as well. And this makes me smile. And cry. And miss her all the more.

I was lamenting the fact recently that Bit would never know her great-grandmothers like I did, but I'm wrong. She'll just have a different relationship with them.