Shuggie (my mom) met me at my in-laws this weekend to bring my two-year-old, Sadie, to me after a little spend the night visit at Shuggie’s house. We were unloading Shuggie’s car and my husband asked me for a diaper. I grabbed one out of the bag over my shoulder and asked my mother for the wipes.

Shuggie: I ran out of the ones you sent but I had some that I keep in my car.
She reached around in her backseat and handed them to me.

Me: Um, Mom? These are Clorox wipes. Tell me you didn’t wipe her butt with these.
Shuggie: Uh-oh… I… oh. Huh. Yeaaah… I’m not…
Me: *terrified face*

She DID eventually produce an actual package of baby wipes but she never said whether or not the Clorox wipes had pulled double duty.

THIS is the puddle my mother waded through to take Aubrey to school several weeks ago. At the time, the water was all the way to the fence.

My mother, Shuggie, has been in town for several weeks helping me with the kids while I’ve been a little under the weather. Aubrey (5) especially loves having her grandmother here, because Shuggie walks her to school everyday (or attempts to pull her in our bike trailer) while I stay at home with her two younger sisters. Aubrey loves walking to school and the few minutes of alone time she has with Shuggie.

It has been raining nonstop in the Charleston area for about a week. This area is called The Lowcountry for a reason. In most areas the elevation is below sea level.

On Tuesday morning I was going to warn Shuggie that they shouldn’t walk because part of their normal route to school would be flooded, but when I saw her grab my keys and head into the drizzling rain I assumed she would not be walking.

Thirty minutes later my front door swung open and there stood my mother, soaking wet, barefoot and holding her shoes and socks.

“WHAT THE?” I asked.

“The field on the way to school was flooded.”

“I know…it always floods when it rains. I was going to tell you but I saw you grab my keys and it was raining.”

“Well, it was just drizzling so we decided to walk, but we got to that field behind the school and the water was up over my ankles,” she explained.

“MOM, that water gets THIGH deep!”

“We were blocked in by the woods on one side and the baseball fields on the other. Aubrey was going to be late so I took off my shoes and socks and carried her across…”

“Oh. My. God. What was Aubrey doing?”

“She screamed the whole time and bit a hole through my t-shirt she was trying so hard to hold on to me.” Mom said.

“Why didn’t you just cut around the baseball field?”

“She would have been late and I would have had to take her into the office soaking wet to check her in. So we waded through, I walked her to the school then I waded back through. I made it to the sidewalk and saw a guy pulling a bike trailer and told him he needed to turn around because it was flooded.”

“What did he do?”

“He said, ‘You know there’s a bridge in the woods, right?'”

My mother stared at her bare feet and said, “No. No I did not.”

She’s leaving tomorrow. Me thinks she has had enough!

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“WHAT”, you have asked,”is a Shuggie?” Let me define it for you:

Shuggie– n. slang, derivative of the Latin meaning Sugar Momma
A grandmother or older woman who gives tirelessly of her time, money, energy and love to anyone and everyone. She expects nothing in return. She can sleep in any climate or environment, regardless of temperature and/or sleeping conditions, including but not limited to: sleeping on a pool float, a mattress in a garage, or in a double bed with two squirming and sweaty preschoolers. A Shuggie’s diet may vary depending on her surroundings and how many other hungry mouths need to be fed. It is common for a Shuggie to wait for small children and young, exhausted mother’s to eat before ever even considering her own hunger. A Shuggie is also known for driving great distances in order to put other’s needs ahead of her own. To find a Shuggie of your very own, you’ll have to pray, only God knows how to make something this good.