Moomump

Since I was a tyke too tiny to say her name, Mildred was "Moomump" to me, and the appellation stuck for the whole family thenceforward. At every stage in my life, she was the perfect aunt. When my age was in single digits, I could cajole her into giving me the presents my parents refused. I called her a few times at that age when I felt picked on by my parents, and she'd come over, subtly mending fences. In my teen years, it was Moomump who first let me drive; in her big Chrysler 300 we'd blast our way to the Oregon coast, me a fourteen-year-old, being prodded to get it over eighty. "Don't drive like an old lady," she'd say, offering me a cigarette. In my young adulthood and later, I realized how brilliant she was, and what a great source of good advice and amazing stories. Of her famous friends: artists and actors and musicians and politicians. She and my dad -- he the older by a couple of years -- grew up at the poor end of lower middle class.