Momma / Angela Janet Caldwell Character Analysis

She’d tell me, “Especially don’t you ever let anyone call you Buddy, I may have some problems but being stupid isn’t one of them. I would’ve added that dy onto the end of your name if I intended for it to be there […] Your name is Bud, period.

“A bud is a flower-to-be. A flower in waiting. Waiting for just the right warmth and care to open up. It’s a little fist of love waiting to unfold and be seen by the world. And that’s you.”

It’s funny how now that I’m ten years old and just about a man I can see how Momma was so wrong. She was wrong because she probably should’ve told me the things she thought I was too young to hear, because now that she’s gone I’ll never know what they were. Even if I was too young back then I could’ve rememorized them and used them when I did need help, like right now.

“My mother said the same thing, that families should be there for each other all the time. She always used to tell me that no matter where I went or what I did that she’d be there for me, even if she wasn’t somewhere that I could see her […] She would tell me every night before I went to sleep that no matter what happened I could sleep knowing that there had never been a little boy, anywhere, anytime, who was loved more than she loved me. She told me that as long as I remembered that I’d be OK.”

Someone who doesn’t know who their family is, is like dust blowing around in a storm, they don’t really belong any one place […] I might not know who my family was, but I knew they were out there somewhere, and it seemed to make a whole lot more sense to think that they were somewhere around Flint instead of out west.

“We’ve been hoping for eleven years that she’d send word or come home, and she finally has. Looks to me like she sent us the best word we’ve had in years.”

Miss Thomas smiled at me and I knew she was trying to say I was the word that my momma had sent to them.

The picture looked like it belonged. It’s strange the way things turn out, here I’d been carrying Momma around for all this time and I’d finally put her somewhere where she wanted to be, back in her own bedroom, back amongst all her horses.

She’d tell me, “Especially don’t you ever let anyone call you Buddy, I may have some problems but being stupid isn’t one of them. I would’ve added that dy onto the end of your name if I intended for it to be there […] Your name is Bud, period.

“A bud is a flower-to-be. A flower in waiting. Waiting for just the right warmth and care to open up. It’s a little fist of love waiting to unfold and be seen by the world. And that’s you.”

It’s funny how now that I’m ten years old and just about a man I can see how Momma was so wrong. She was wrong because she probably should’ve told me the things she thought I was too young to hear, because now that she’s gone I’ll never know what they were. Even if I was too young back then I could’ve rememorized them and used them when I did need help, like right now.

“My mother said the same thing, that families should be there for each other all the time. She always used to tell me that no matter where I went or what I did that she’d be there for me, even if she wasn’t somewhere that I could see her […] She would tell me every night before I went to sleep that no matter what happened I could sleep knowing that there had never been a little boy, anywhere, anytime, who was loved more than she loved me. She told me that as long as I remembered that I’d be OK.”

Someone who doesn’t know who their family is, is like dust blowing around in a storm, they don’t really belong any one place […] I might not know who my family was, but I knew they were out there somewhere, and it seemed to make a whole lot more sense to think that they were somewhere around Flint instead of out west.

“We’ve been hoping for eleven years that she’d send word or come home, and she finally has. Looks to me like she sent us the best word we’ve had in years.”

Miss Thomas smiled at me and I knew she was trying to say I was the word that my momma had sent to them.

The picture looked like it belonged. It’s strange the way things turn out, here I’d been carrying Momma around for all this time and I’d finally put her somewhere where she wanted to be, back in her own bedroom, back amongst all her horses.