K - Keesler (Tabatha)

Sometime shortly before I hit junior high my cousin started staying with us during the summer holidays. Her name was Tabatha. Tabatha Keesler (there's my K), but we called her Tabby.

My recollection may be off, but my understanding of her coming to stay with us was to keep her out of trouble. My aunt Dulcy (Tabby's mother) was a single mom and she worked a full-time job. Once Tabby had gotten a little older, her choice of friends and activities were not mom-acceptable. So, in the summer when there was no school, Tabby had a lot of free time to get into trouble. Somehow, the solution was to send her to another state where she not only had zero influence from her troublemaker friends but also more adult supervision.

So, our male-dominated household gained a sister every year for almost three months.

My brothers and I loved when Tabby came to stay with us because she was older. I was the oldest of three boys and Tabby was four years older than me. Plus, we were a bunch of country hicks and she was from the city. She had some good stories. The first few years she came, she was just an older playmate, but as she progressed into high school she had world experiences we had never even considered.

She would tell us about the crazy nights she had out with her friends and we understood why her mother sent her away each summer. She also listened to music we had never heard before.

We lived outside a very small town and the only music we ever heard was what our parents played on the radio. It was country music all the time. In the early 80's, people didn't have MP3 players. The cassette Walkman and MTV (we didn't have cable anyway) wasn't even a thing yet. I wasn't going to school and learning of new music from my friends.

One day she checked out some records from the city library.

By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1546608

By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=2221621

We had no idea what we were looking at. And it took her a while to convince us that Boy George was actually a boy. When we got back to the house, we couldn't wait to play the music for us. And, of course, we loved it because our older cooler cousin told us it was cool. But we had never been exposed to music like that before. It was so different. Although, I do remember genuinely enjoying Blondie. I was obsessed with the song Rapture.  

I think it was the pseudo-rap portion that fascinated me. I still have that part in my head.

It wasn't just about the music, it was just cool to have another person in the house. She was older. She was from a very different place than us. And she was fun. We loved our summers with Tabby.

Once she hit about 16, she was able to even venture out from our house on her own. She formed a few friendships with locals that she maintained for the rest of her life. I remember once being disappointed that she had made a friend with a local girl and she would occasionally go spend the night at this girls house. She was my cousin. She's supposed to be here to play with me.

I'm sure she got tired of constantly being surrounded by her younger cousins. My mom did her best to help her meet some new people.

Once she hit college age, the need to be shipped out-of-state diminished and we did not see her as often. We saw her at family get-togethers about once a year. Since that side of the family lived close to six hours away, my brothers and I had a connection with Tabby we did not have with the rest of our cousins. We had seen a lot of her and the rest of our cousins only at reunions. Her connection to our family was so strong, she asked my father to give her away at her wedding.

All (well, most) of the cousins on my mom's side
Tabatha (front left)

Well into our adult lives, Tabatha was one of the cousins I was always excited to see. But as often happens, as adult responsibilities took over, that connection began to diminish.

We saw each other now and then when she was passing through town or at family gatherings, but the childhood history was well in the past. However, my mother stayed very close to her.

Tabatha died a few years ago after a long battle with cancer. She had worked for the Fulton County Sheriff's Department for many years and it was touching to see how many lives she touched when we attended her funeral. We may have known her as the rowdy teenager, but she had grown into a beautiful adult.

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This month, I am participating in the A to Z Challenge. Each day this month, people around the world are writing blog posts and working their way through the alphabet. Each person decides their own personal theme. I am writing about people who have affected my life.