I noticed one day that my bedroom seems to be a shrine to women in my family. A hand towel with your tiny handprint in paint is next to the window. A good reproduction of a 1780 painting of my great, great, great, great, great, great, great grandmother, Letitia Reed Hughes hangs near the door. On a wall between these two, over the headboard of a bed would be if I slept in a bed instead of on a futon, is an oil portrait of my mother.

The artist was a man who pulled up in the driveway at 1030 E. Kings Highway one day during the Second World War in a Hudson Terraplane, its back seat stacked with gold leaf frames, its passenger seat covered with rolled canvases, brushes, tubes of paint, a portable easel, a notebook, a Remington 12 typewriter, and a pint of Mattingly & Moore bourbon. The painting probably reseumbles dozens of others dutifully hung in the homes of children and grandchildren of that era's residents of Broadmoor and similar districts throughout the Deep South. Beyond the standard, formalized pose, this hack's work does seem to capture a little of the magic of this woman, your grandmother.

She dominates any room she enters. A beautiful woman, five feet six inches in height, she looks those who speak to her in the eye, listens to what they say, usually with friendly interest, usually understands what is being said, and rarely agrees with it. On her next birthday, she will mark the beginning of her seventy-first year at approximately the time her plane touches down in Las Vegas.

I do not recall ever seeing my mother fix a drink for herself, for when I was old enough to start remembering such things, I was old enough to respond to the rattling of ice and measure out the fresh ice, bourbon and water. Nor have I ever seen her carry a lit cigarette across a room, for that would be unladylike. As of this writing, she pays your aunt Heloise to change light bulbs for her, claiming that she doesn't understand mechanical things.

In the mid-eighties, she purchased yet another book on horse race betting techniques. The author's research involved a lot of eavesdropping and carefull observation of betters at tracks around the country. He described a woman seen at the Meadowlands one night, making odd, mystical passes over the racing form before leaping to her feet a minute before the windows closed to place her bets. That was your grandmother. Gambling, the occult, being admired, and entertaining are her favorite things, and they are choices matching her strengths well.

I know of no one else who so magnificently balances hedonism and self-discipline, a curious combination that means, "knowing when to overindulge." As much as I enjoy drinking myself silly on occasion with equally drunken, equally silly friends, as well as I understand the sin of gluttony, and as large a man as I am, I have seen my mother consume greater quantities of food and/or drink than I many times. When making yourself a mental picture of what a remarkable feat this is, my daughter, you must remember that your own mother used to look at the servings heaped on my plate every morning and evening and exclaim, "Oh, my God" in disbelief and trepidation.

When I was a small boy, my mother used to bribe me with a dollar each week to attend church with my grandmother. Today, she tells people that the dollar was for the collection plate, but I know that I had not discovered theft yet at age seven. She gave me the dollar so that her mother, a staunch Baptist who would not miss a weekly opportunity to dress up, see friends and acquaintances, and look up to see who was falling asleep in the choir loft, would not nag her about raising me and Heloise as heathens. One Sunday morning, I asked my mother why I had to go to church when she didn't. Without batting an eye, or for that matter, without opening an eye or even raising her head from her pillow, she replied in the most reasonable tones, "... because my mother made me go to church enough when I was a little girl to last a lifetime, and you haven't been to church enough to last a lifetime yet."

It is also true that when she was a churchgoing little girl, the minister once asked his flock in the best democratic, Calvinist tradition if any of them had anything to add to his sermon, and that little Helen, age five, enthusiastically raised her hand, marched down the center aisle to a spot in front of the pulpit and sang "Tiptoe Through The Tulips." To this day, if she misunderstands a question, it is usually for the best.

Johnette, her eldest sister married a highly successful veterinarian, and the two of them built a very nice home at 1034 East Kings Highway with a swimming pool, many annual "Yard of the Year" awards from the Shreveport paper, and many other signs of success. Her brother Jack became a regionally prominent ear, nose and throat specialist and millionaire. Her younger sister Millie settled in New York as a Vanderbilt's secretary, which seemed glamorous to her doting mother. Helen advanced as far as any woman in the insurance field, becoming a troubleshooter office manager for Massachusetts Mutual, a large company, then Vice President of Lee National, a smaller firm. Headquartered at her Mass. Mutual career peak in Clifton, New Jersey, she was often called upon to fly on short notice to Honolulu, Paris or Anchorage for weeks to find and fix whatever was wrong in an agency office.

My grandmother, unable to grasp what my mother was doing for a living and thus unable to attach prestige, pride and boasting to it, once patted my mother on the arm consolingly and said, "Helen, I know that one day we'll be as proud of you as we are of the other children." She was wrong and unintentionally cruel to say that. Neither my mother nor I ever forgot it.

She idolized her father, and current photos of her living room clearly show his walking cane on display, framed and behind glass. Many of the things that she was most excited about including in my childhood were things that my grandfather had built into hers. She woke me before dawn a few times, just because it was before dawn and the miracle of sunrise should be part of one's experience. She gave me wonderful years, magical Christmases and hearty breakfasts. There were also large helpings of bravery, endurance, pragmatism and dignity. She taught me that the only person one can legitimately look down on is the person who believes that he or she can look down on others, and that her father was virtually a holy man.

Comments always welcome