Tag Archives: #Jilo

Losing Teeth

This is the first of a series of posts comparing experiences across the generations,. Some milestones that may be covered will be losing teeth, learning to read, going to bed, waiting for holidays, school days and others that may be suggested by family members.

Today we share memories of losing teeth from family members ages six through 80.

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Pearl admiring my missing teeth.

Jilo: Mommy did you have an active tooth fairy retrieving your teeth as a child? Did daddy?

Me: I did. She would take our teeth and leave a dime or maybe a quarter, along with a box of Jujyfruits or Good and Plenty. I was talking to Pearl about the tooth fairy and she said “I remember a quarter but no candy! I think the tooth fairy played favorites lol.” I’m sure I remember a little box of candy under my pillow. Maybe by the time Pearl was losing teeth, the tooth fairy had decided against leaving candy.

Jujyfruits

Ife: Mommy, the tooth fairy left you candy? That sounds like something done to keep those teeth coming.

Me: It does seem incongruous. But I’ve heard that the Tooth Fairy does like candy!

Me: Your father/grandfather remembers nothing about a tooth fairy or money or even losing teeth. Your uncle Michael remembers the tooth fairy and getting a dollar under his pillow.

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My collection of my children’s lost teeth.

I used to save all of my children’s teeth. Didn’t someone find them? I still have them and they are so small!

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Tulani: I don’t remember losing any teeth, but I do remember getting 50 cents from the tooth fairy and putting teeth under my pillow.  I also remember finding all the saved teeth in your jewelry box one time when Jilo banished me to your room for fighting with Ife or something, and I was looking through your jewelry box.  I was older and don’t recall being disappointed. 
No teeth under pillows for my children.  And no money.  Just the satisfaction of ripping a tooth out. Except Tatayana who worked the system and got whatever money Jilo was handing out.   

Tatayana: I don’t think I ever believed in the tooth fairy, but I knew some of my cousins did so I’m pretty sure a few times when my teeth fell out I went to spend the night at Aunt Jilo’s because they got a few dollars there when their teeth fell out . I definitely used to push my teeth out. I also remember having Futch tie one of my teeth to dental floss and pull it out when I couldn’t get it out myself . 

Matthew: “My very first loose tooth came out when I was eating spaghetti. I was sure it was blood, but it was just sauce! I don’t believe in the tooth fairy and don’t think I ever did. Big foot and tooth fairy same old same old. Just stories and not true. I collect my teeth and keep them in a box. Sometime I go back and look at them and remember how I lost them. “. I asked him his favorite tooth memory and he smiled a big smile and said, “that summer at the hotel when it was loose and dad tied it to a piece of dental floss to the door and slammed the door to yank it out. The first two times I was scared and moved with the door, but the third time it worked!”

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Me: As a continuing part of my losing teeth investigation, when Azaria and Aziya were here for my birthday celebration, I asked them if they put their teeth under their pillow and if they found any money in the morning. Aziya nodded. Azaria said that they did put their teeth under their pillows and they found $3 in the morning. She added that her mother didn’t have a tooth fairy when she was little, she had a tooth rat. Luckily I was able to ask Marsha and get her story.

Abu Rat

Marsha: Lol…When I was little, I didn’t imagine the usual sparkly tooth fairy. Mine was a little rat dressed up as Abu from Aladdin. The night I placed my tooth under my pillow after watching Aladdin and I must’ve been half-asleep when I pictured Abu rat sneaking in to take my tooth. The next day I told my mom what I saw, and she thought it was so cute . So now my mom shares that story with Azaria and Aziya. Now it’s kind of become a sweet little family memory. 

Me: When I asked Cabral if he remembered losing teeth and getting money under his pillow or anything, he replied kinda but not really. Tulani remembers when Cabral was about five he was sledding down the hill in front of the house and hit the fence post and lost a front tooth. He lost the other front tooth soon afterwards. They were out a long time.

Cabral

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Note to the Tooth Fairy from Maya

Dear Tooth fairy Why did you not responde and come yesterday? How are you please write

Tyra: I didn’t have any change. After that, I started keeping a stock of Dollar Store trinkets.   Maya lost a tooth in an apple at lunch and the tooth came home in a baggie of cracker crumbs. We thought the tooth was lost but the tooth fairy visited anyway. I found the baggie in her lunch box the next morning. 

Tyra

Tyra: I got silver coins, probably 50 cents? I left a dollar until i started leaving trinkets.  I didn’t always have cash. And Maya didn’t always tell me she had a loose tooth. They liked the trinkets. Money was less gratifying.  I needed to be fairy ready! The loose to lost process seemed to go pretty quickly with them. Two or three days. Olivia lost three teeth in one day. Once she got over the fear of pain, she pulled her own teeth.

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 Jilo: I didn’t aggressively try to get teeth to fall out but I wiggled them when they were loose. When the tooth came out, I put it under my pillow and the tooth fairy came, took the tooth and left money. I don’t remember how much, but I remember being excited and looking forward to it.  Also trying to stay awake to see her come. I believed in the tooth fairy until the time I put a tooth under my pillow and it was still there in the morning. When I told mommy she said “Oh! With Ayanna being sick I didn’t get a chance to get your tooth last night.” I still haven’t recovered. I don’t think that she knew that I really believed the tooth fairy was real. I mean why wouldn’t the tooth fairy be real when the other fairies are out there doing fairy things. To be honest I don’t think I stopped believing, I just figure she had a group of helpers like any international business woman would. 

Hasina: Can confirm that at the Tisdale house we had the tooth fairy! I did make mine fall out faster – my favorite technique was to wiggle the tooth until I could fit the tip of my tongue underneath it to then push up and pop the tooth out. I think we got a dollar per, in cash or coin form.  

Abeo: I honestly don’t remember much about the tooth fairy or loosing teeth. But I did have to have a tooth pulled out at the dentist cause an adult tooth grew in fully and the baby tooth wasn’t even loose or wiggly. Still got a crooked bottom tooth to show for it 

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Sydney: I second that, the Graham household also had the tooth fairy. 

Sydney: I feel like a dollar sounds right or maybe even 25 cents per tooth I don’t remember. I did not push my teeth out. I would wait until it was hanging on by a literal thread and my mom would have to pull it while i was sleeping.

Ife: The Graham House did have a fairy. She brought $1 per tooth in quarters. Occasionally she missed a pickup, usually Sydney’s, and I would tell Sydney that she hadn’t come because Sydney hadn’t slept enough and she didn’t want to be seen. Then we would leave the tooth another night and she would eventually get it.

Sydney would not wiggle her teeth much, like she was afraid of having them come out and several times her gums would grow around the teeth to keep it from falling out and we had to go to the dentist to get them out. Extra healthy gums were to blame. I still have all the teeth in dated little ziplock bags in my bedside table. What does a mother do with the teeth after the fairy turns over possession?

Sean and Sydney also argued with me about the existence of the fairy when I finally told them she wasn’t real. They had evidence to prove she did.

Ife

Ayanna: @ife do you have enough to make a line of smiling mugs?

Ife: Ayanna , I will look but I’m pretty sure they are such tiny teeth, they might need to be shot glasses ife

Abeo: I love that you still have Sean and Sydney’s lil teeth, ife!

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Kylett: I don’t recall ever believing in the tooth fairy. I think Cecelia might have had the tradition of giving us a quarter or two if we lost a tooth. She just gave the coins directly to us. I don’t remember any associations with us going to sleep or finding it under our pillow. Unfortunately I think for at least two of my teeth, they came out while I was eating and I accidentally swallowed them. I can’t recall what happened with the other teeth, we might have just thrown them away. 

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James: Mumia remembers losing his first tooth at 4 years old.  He let it come out at its own speed, not much pushing or rushing it.  Once it was out, he thinks he got 5 dollars and 50 cents for it.  At the time, he did believe that money came from the tooth fairy. 

Ayanna: $5.50 for one tooth!

James: I remember losing an adult tooth when I was about 10. There was still part of the tooth left so the dentist put a filler on there. They said over time it would die and it would need to be pulled out, but so far so good. When I look at it, it’s shaped a bit differently, but it hasn’t given me any trouble. I remember losing another adult tooth at 15 or 16, when I was playing basketball in the street over by Reed’s house.
I don’t have much detail to my memories about losing my baby teeth. I am pretty sure we got 50 cents, but am not sure about the amount (vaguely remember that it was coins rather than paper though).

Ayanna: I remember nothing, really. I am sure we had visits from a nice tooth fairy or maybe I never lost any teeth? I still believe in the tooth fairy.

James: I agree with Ayanna. I heard stories about the tooth fairy leaving money when I was a kid, but I didn’t really believe in her – until I met her at a community festival earlier this year (apparently, she lives in Seattle).

Here is an article about her in the NYT, The Tooth Fairy Is Real. She’s a Dentist in Seattle.

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James: Imani and I made plans to try and catch the tooth fairy in action for a couple of her teeth that were lost over here.  No luck yet though. The plans were nothing too extravagant, just stacking a few toys by the window, so the tooth fairy would knock them down if she came in that way, and me saying I would check on her often once she fell asleep and snap a picture of the Fairy if I came in when she was switching the tooth.

Imani says she does know about the tooth fairy. When she lost her last tooth she left a little doll bed and snack size bag of skittles out on her dresser for the Tooth Fairy. In the morning, the skittles were gone!!!”

James: I was like “Wow. I didn’t even know that the Tooth Fairy liked Candy.”

Imani smiled and responded, “Well, I guess now you know… ” she thought about it a few seconds then added, “all the skittles were gone so she definitely does like Candy!”

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Other information about the Tooth Fairy . It turns out there is a well known Tooth Rat – “El Ratoncito Rerez” who takes teeth and leaves something under the pillow in Spanish speaking countries! And La Petite Souris (The Little Mouse) who preforms tooth duties in France and French speaking Belgium.

Tooth Fairy
Lillian Brown introduces the modern Tooth Fairy 1908
Ratoncito Perez

Jilo’s First Christmas 1970

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Nightgown & Undershirts –  Pee Wee and Winslow.
Sleeper – Grandmother Cleage.
Pop beads, music box, rings, boat, rattle – Ma and Henry.
Poppy $10
Louis $10
Barbara – back carrier.
Silver spoon – Gladys.
2 sleepers & clutch ball – Martha.
Jim out of town (St. Louis) .
Xmas eve at Miriams.  Living at Bro. Johns.
Xmas, went by Grandmother’s. first time she saw Jilo.
Dinner and spent the night at Ma’s.
Jim back on 30th.  Party at BCL (ugh).
Man across the street from Miriam’s hollering for help (“I’m not kidding Help!”)
Pearl and Micheal didn’t come home for Xmas.

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Holding my oldest daughter, Jilo

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Jilo and great grandfather Mershell C. Graham.

My Trip To Norway – Summer 1981

A letter home.
A letter home.

I thought of this card when I saw the prompt for this weeks Sepia Saturday. There is no kiss but there is water and a boat. Reading the card made me remember that I had written up my trip to Norway years ago, I didn’t have to write it from scratch. Hence this post.

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This article first appeared in Catalyst Magazine in the Summer of 1990.

In June of 1981 I was 34 years old, three months pregnant and on my way to spend seven weeks in Norway with my then ten-year-old daughter Jilo.  I left behind my husband Jim and three younger daughters, Ife 8, Ayanna 5 and Tulani 2.  There were also several milk goats and a flock of laying hens on our 5 acres in rural Simpson County, Mississippi.  It was my first time outside of North America.

I had been corresponding with Sister Peg Dunn, a nun, about our mutual interest in Sigrid Undset, Nobel Prize winning Norwegian author of “Kristin Lavrensdatter.” I had become intrigued after reading that she wrote her novels while raising six children. Sister Peg arranged for me to attend the International Summer School at the University of Oslo.  Jilo and I traveled to Norway with her.

It is now 1990, nine years later. I’m 43, the yet-to-be-born-baby is 8 and Jilo will be 20 in June.  We now live in Michigan.  The goats and chickens are gone, but we’ve got rabbits and the garden grows larger every year. When I think about that trip these are my memories, excerpts from my journal and from letters I wrote home.

I remember wondering if those men wearing fatigues waiting to board my plane were hijackers. The pain in my ears as the plane descended. Hearing Danish spoken over the airport loud speaker.

June 16, 1981, Airport in Denmark
Dear folks,
We are drinking orange juice in Denmark and waiting for the plane to Oslo. Ten hours is a long ride! Only two more hours of dark and I am sleepy.
More soon.
Love, Kris

I remember the marigolds and petunias in the window boxes of the apartments and houses everywhere we went. Walking up0 five flights, seventy steps to the apartment we stayed in.  Looking out of the kitchen window at the grass, women hanging out wash and children playing in the yard below.  Walking, walking and more walking.

June 17, 1981 Wednesday, Oslo, Norway
Dear Jim,
We are staying with the lady poet that I met in Chicago. She gave me 2,000 koner ($400) in the bank here. Jilo and I walked all over and never got lost.  Everyone does speak English so far.  Women wear backpacks instead of carrying purses.  Tomorrow the three of us will take a train to Trondjem – a seven hour ride, where we’ll stay in a youth hostel until Monday.  I miss you. 
Love, Kris.

I remember taking the train to Trondjem. How at one point, everybody (except us) got up and turned their seats around to face the opposite direction.  How tired we got of the bread and salami and bread and salami and bread and salami, we had packed to eat.  Mistakenly jumping off of the train before it pulled all the way into the station and then having to jump over the wires and cables to get to the station.

June 19, 1981, Dombas Norway
Dear Jim,
We are staying in a valley surrounded by snow capped mountains tonight.  We walked a mile or more from the train station to the hostel with our backpacks.  Was I glad not to have a suitcase!
Love Kris.

I remember not being afraid to walk around at any time of the day or night. The long days. At midnight it was dusk.  Riding the train through glacial mountains.  How low the clouds were.  Seeing a waterfall in the mountains.  Gudbrunsdal Valley.  How hard it is to strain to catch a work you understand in a new language. How it is even harder to come up with one and say it.  My discomfort at entering the World War II Museum of Resistance and being greeted in, surprise, Norwegian by the welcomers. How they saw my expression and tried French then, to my relief, English.

June 21, 1981, Monday, Dombas, Norway – journal entry.
Jilo and I walked around Dombas in the morning.  There was a field full of the biggest, bright yellow dandelions I have ever seen.  Someone was growing tomatoes under plastic covers…there were bus loads of middle-aged German tourists. Can’t help wonder what they were doing during WWII.

June 23, 1981.  Wednesday. Oslo, Norway – journal entry.
A warm sunny day.  Today we went out to Blinern University on the trikk (subway). Took a tour of the campus.  Met a friend of Sister Peg’s for lunch in the cafeteria, Liv.  She has a research fellowship here. Is married and has an almost two year old son, Mangus.  She had taught a few years in Chicago.  Had read and seen “The Women’s Room” on TV recently.  Especially remembered the part where the woman is trying to quiet the two children and put them to sleep and the husband staggers out going to his mother’s where he can “get some sleep.” She said the wife should have thrown one of the babies at him.

We walked home, a half-hour, pleasant walk through a camomile covered field.  At dinner preparation time (Jilo cooked) we blew the stove fuse and couldn’t figure out how to change it so had to eat cold leftovers.

Then we caught the trikk to another friend of Sister Peg’s.  She lived in an apartment made from the second floor of her parents’ house.  She taught English to adults and Norwegian emigrant children. She also had seen “Women’s Room” and liked it, although she said, it didn’t deal with the problems of her generation. She told us about the social discrimination against emigrants, poor people on the east side of Oslo (where the tour buses never go) and different dialects in Oslo and having her passport stolen from a basket she carried in the store. Those things didn’t used to happen, she said.  She had been going to Poland.  There was a candle on her table and along with wine, coffee, chocolates, nuts, coffee cake, Christmas cake, butter and goat cheese.  Jilo drank solo (grape pop) She gave Jilo a snowflake pin and showed her a bunch of English books.  One poetry book included the poem “Give you son forty licks, beat him when he sneezes.”  She told us how she used to drag her younger sisters around by their feet when she was left in charge and they would act up.

I remember watching Ethiopians playing soccer in the field of camomile.  Celebrating Jilo’s birthday in the mountains with whipped cream topped apple cake.  The Folk Museums with old, old  houses, stave churches and guides dressed in national costume.  The festival day at school with the fiddler father, singing mother and dancing daughter.  How they seemed to really be enjoying themselves.  Eating lefse, roumergroten, flat brod and brown goat cheese, Jilo walking and riding the trikk all over Oslo, by herself, not speaking Norwegian and never getting lost or having any trouble.

June 29, 1981, Monday, Oslo – journal entry.
Today began cloudy and rainy but ended up nice and sunny.  Met a Californian in the laundry room.  A student from last year passing through, doing her clothes and reading Don Juan.  Trying to lose her past.  She asked if I’d found rules to live by. I told her my sister had. She also mentioned the fox in “The Little prince” and being responsible for what you love.

I remember the children’s party. Organized by a Mexican married to a Norwegian and a Bulgarian.  The kids tossing balloons around.  The Bulgarian complaining about her young chuildren catching colds so often at day care and balancing the children, her ex-husband and job.  The Mexican singing “Las Mañanitas” for the son of a Norwegian woman who worked in the kitchen. Hearing the Royal British Wedding on television in another room while I washed clothes.

July 3, 1981, Friday. Oslo – journal entry.
Started out a very sunny, warm day until after lunch, ended up being cold and rainy.  Jilo and I went with some students to the theatre.  Before the play started a tall man came up and said that he should have written a synopsis and did I know the story?  Then he started telling it to me. A fairy tale about a princess, a would be prince who had to get three feathers of a dragon to win her. Very good…I even understood a few words. The theater was old and big. We had to to to a small room up in the top or the play.  Afterwards we went in the cold rain to a kiosk and got sausages, french fries and ice cream.  We had agreed to talk only in Norwegian.  Whew!  I was cold with a dress, bare legs and sandals. But a good evening and it’s nice to be back in the room and warm!

July 2, 1981, Oslo
Dear Ayanna, This morning the Norwegian woman who cleans my room, washed the floor and was speaking Norwegian to me about my flower, but I couldn’t understand what she meant.  I guess I have to study harder. 
Love, Mom.

I remember realizing that the woman had put a saucer under the plant for me.  Walking to the park past a mental hospital.  The man people told me had been brilliant who stepped from one square to another square for hours at a time all day  long when they let him out of the hospital. Seeing topless sun bathers. Vigelandsparken Sculpture Park with nude statues of all stages of life but, strangely I thought, no pregnant woman.  The garden section, blocks and blocks of tiny houses for drinking coffee and eating cakes, surrounded by flower and vegetable gardens of those who lived in apartments.  The strange feeling of living where Nazi soldiers had lived when they occupied Norway.  Hearing my mother’s laugh coming from a group of students gathered on the steps below my window. Watching day by day as a young man worked on repairing the stairs…the girl that came and watched him, talked to him. just wanted to be with him.

July 19, 1981 Lillehammer, Norway
Dear Jim,
We did get out alive from Sigrid Undset’s bed and house.  It was very strange. Reminded me of one of those Public TV mysteries where suspecting travelers are taken in and treated kindly by weird folk who later murder them in their beds. I discovered how Sigrid Undset wrote a Nobel Prizewinning novel “while raising six children.” She left the two step-daughters in Oslo and moved to Lillehammer with her two young sons and a nursemaid.  There she wrote the first book of “Kristin Lavernsdatter.” She was tired after this because she had to keep interrupting her work to cook, clean, etc., so she brought tow more old houses. One small one for her husband (an artist) to paint in when he came out from Oslo and one for herself to work in.  It is this one that we slept in and it is connected to the original house by an added on corridor.  She also hired several maids and a cook., in addition to the nursemaid. She then left the kids and the servants in the original house and proceeded to write her masterpieces.  She later had a third child and for many years later served as a foster mother to two Finnish war orphans…Her daughter-in-law, Christianna, was odd but very talkative and nice to us.  She gave me two children’s books by Sigrid Undset (in Norwegian) and she got her young neighbor to drive us out to Undset’s grave about 15 miles away.  There was a weird little man, about her age who she referred to as “the young man.” He tried to be pleasant, spoke no English and was always leaping around smiling. One time he was supposed to open a bottle of wine and he couldn’t find the corkscrew.  He kept popping into the room and finally she sailed out after him. I expected to hear a loud smack as she boxed his ears, but she found the corkscrew and opened it. I could understand a lot of the Norwegian they spoke and that was encouraging.  I had given up hope.
Love, Kris

I remember how awful it felt to be back in school studying Norwegian and how much I felt I was missing by sitting in the classroom when real Norwegians were all about talking real Norwegian and wonder still why I kept going to class.

July 22, 1981 – journal entry.
Homework very hard.  Feel overwhelmed by busy work.  Decided to skip class tomorrow and go on field trip with another class.  Miss  Jim.  Interviewed by the newspaper, Aftenposten. Very poor English by reporter, better by photographer, nonexistent Norwegian by moi. Rather embarrassing.  Jilo got us some Norwegian deodorant.  It doesn’t work a bit.

I remember the lady from Denmark who sat next to us on the plane ride home and talked about how bad things were getting, she had to lock her doors now when she left her house, not like the old days. How dirty everything looked when we got back to Chicago and how good it was to see my family and eat home-cooked food again.

 

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Christmas Visit – 1975

Kristin Williams and James Williams
Six months pregnant wearing overalls and Jim pulling up his sock.

We moved to Simpson County, Mississippi in November of 1975.  Jim was in charge of the Emergency Land Fund’s Model farm.  Our daughter Jilo was 5 and Ife was 2.5.  I was 29 and Jim was just about to turn 31.  This was before we had goats, chickens or rabbits.  The greenhouses weren’t in production.  I remember several of the farmers Jim worked with gave him gifts of money for Christmas.  It didn’t amount to more than $30 total but it paid for all the gas we used.

We decided to drive up to share the holidays with Jim’s family in Rock Hill, MO.  They lived at #1 Inglewood Court, right outside of St. Louis. Seventeen year old Micheal, fifteen year old Monette and twelve year old Debbie were living at home. We made the eight hour trip in the little gray Volkswagon that came with the job. We took food to eat on the way, left early and drove straight through.  I don’t remember anything specific about driving up. As I recall we got to St. Louis before dark.  Jim’s parents gave us their bedroom.  They were always so nice about that.  Jim and the kids and I shared the pushed together twin beds.  There weren’t presents for us but Jim’s mother looked around and came up with some. I don’t remember what she gave Jilo and Ife but she gave me two copper vases and Jim two glass paperweights. I don’t remember what we took as gifts.

Jilo, Ife and Deborah Williams.
Jilo, Ife and Debbie Williams.

I remember going to see Jim’s brother, Harold, at one of his jobs.  He had several, just like his father always did. We also stopped by his studio where he made plaster knick knacks.  Or was it cement bird baths?  Or both?  There was a Salvation Army or Goodwill store nearby and we stopped and I got some shirts for the kids and a dress that Ife wanted.  Mostly we stayed around the house and visited.

Micheal, Chester and Harold Williams
Three of Jim’s brothers – Micheal, Chester and Harold Williams at Harold’s place of work.

We stayed until New Years Eve and left in the evening.  There is never enough food or time to prepare it for the return trip. We stopped at Howard Johnson’s somewhere on the way home and I remember getting fried oysters. It was cold and dark and clear. There were stars. And there are always trucks. We listened to the radio and talked and maybe sang some.  The kids eventually fell asleep in the backseat and we welcomed the New Year driving through the night.

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Jilo 1972

I came across this photograph of my oldest daughter, Jilo, while organizing my photographs. I like the shadows.  This one was in the box marked “Detroit 1966 – 1972”.  We were living in Brewster projects.  I was teaching pre-k at Merrill Palmer Institute, which was within walking distance.  I didn’t drive and walked or took the bus everywhere.  Jim was there part of the time.  He was a community organizer, still running the Black Conscience Library and also working out of a center on 12th Street.  I wasn’t yet pregnant with my second daughter and hadn’t decided to move to Atlanta, where my sister lived.  A year later in March, I would have two daughters and all of us would be living in Atlanta.  I worked with the Institute of the Black World for awhile.  Jim got a job printing with the Atlanta Voice. When he told me I could stop working outside,  I gave notice and stayed home with my six week old and almost three year old.  It was all a long time ago.