We Howards were not inclined to keep in touch with all our relatives; it was not feasible. By the year I moved to Albuquerque (1972) I had more descendants than there are days in the year - I should keep track of their birthdays? Heavens, I had trouble keeping track of their names!

But I did have some favourites, people I loved irrespective of blood relationship if any: my older sister Audrey, my older ‘sister' Eleanor, my brother Tom, my cousin Nelson and his wife Betty Lou, my father and I missed him always. My mother I did not love but I respected her; she had done her best for all of us.

My children? While they were at home I tried to treat them all alike and to lavish on each of them love and affection - even when my head ached and my feet hurt.

Once they were married - Now comes the Moment of Truth. I tried to do unto them as they did unto me. If one of my offspring called me regularly, I tried to call her (him) as often. To some I sent birthday cards, not much else. If a grandchild gave attention to Grandma, Grandma paid attention to that child. But there just isn't time to be both openhanded and evenhanded with one hundred and eighty-one grandchildren, that being the number I had (unless I lost track) by my ninety-ninth birthday.

My special loves - Blood did not necessarily enter into it. There was little Helen Beck, who was just Carol's age, and the two little girls went to Greenwood school together in first and second grade. Helen was a lovely child and utterly sweet natured. Because her mother was a working widow, Helen spent quite a bit of time in my kitchen until we moved too far away.

But she did not forget me and I did not forget her. She went into show business and travelled; we tried to keep each other advised of moves so that we could make rendezvous every year or six. She lived a long time for a non-Howard and was a beauty right up to her death - so much so that she could afford to dance naked into her seventies, at which age she still gave every man present an erection. Yet her dancing was never styled to be provocative, nothing like the cootch dancer Little Egypt of an earlier generation.

Helen changed her name early in her show-biz career; most people knew her as Sally Rand. I loved Sally and Sally loved me, and we could be apart for several years, then manage to make a rendezvous, and be right back where we had left off, intimate friends.

Sally and I shared one oddity: both of us went to school as often as we could manage it. She usually performed at night; in daytime she was a special student at whatever campus was nearest. By the time she died (1979) she had far more collegiate hours than most professors. She was a polymath; everything interested Sally and she studied in depth. Sally did not drink or smoke; her one weakness was big, thick textbooks.

Nancy stayed closer to me than did my other children, and I was her husband's sometime mistress for sixty-four years... because Nancy had decided it that way before she married Jonathan. Not often but always when we met and could find opportunity. I can't believe that Jonathan truly had much interest in this old carcass into its nineties - but he could lie about it delightfully. We really did love each other, and an erection is the most flattering compliment a man can pay to an old woman. Jonathan was a true Galahad, one who reminds me of my husband Galahad. Not too surprising, as Galahad is descended from Jonathan (13.2 per cent, counting convergence) - and from me, of course, but all of my husbands are descended from me except Jake and Zeb, who were born on another time line. (Time line four, Ballox O'Malley) (Oops! And Jubal, time line three.)

As a by-product of Nancy's offering Jonathan to me, Brian got Nancy's sweet, young body - the first incest in our family, I think. Whether it happened again on later occasions I do not know and it is none of my business. Nancy and I were much alike in temperament - both of us strongly interested in sex but relaxed about it. Eager but not tense.

Carol - For Carol I always tried to save 26 June, Carol's Day, Carolita's Day, Carolmas, and eventually Fiesta de Santa Carolita for millions of people who never knew her.

After 26 June 1918, she gave up her birthday entirely in order to celebrate Carol's Day.

During the decade that I spent mostly in Albuquerque she was star-billed several times in Reno or Vegas on Carol's Day. She always held her luau on z6 June even if a midnight show forced her to start it at four in the morning. No matter the hour her friends flocked to attend, coming from around the globe. It became a great honour to be invited to Carolita's annual party, something to boast about in London and Rio.

Carol married Rod Jenkins of the Schmidt family in 1920, when he was just back from France - Rainbow Division and Rod picked up a Silver Star and a Purple Heart without losing anything. (One scar on his belly -) Rod had majored in mathematics at Illinois Tech., specialising in topology, then he had joined up between his junior and senior years, came back and shifted to theatre arts. He had decided to try to shift from amateur magician to professional - stage magic, I mean. He told me once that being shot at had caused him to reassess his values and ambitions.

So Carol started her married life handing things to her husband on stage, while dressed in so little that she constituted misdirection every time she twitched. She tried to time it so that she had babies when Rod was resting. When that was not possible, she would go on working until a theatre manager called a halt... usually as a result of complaints by females not as well endowed. Carol was one of those fortunate women who got more beautiful as her belly bulged.

She parked her children with Rod's mother when she and Rod were on the road, but she usually had one or two with her, a privilege her youngsters all loved. Then, in' 55 (I think) Rod made a mistake in a bullet-catching illusion, and died on stage.

Carol did his act (or a magic act of some sort with his props) the next night. One thing was certain: she was not hiding props or rabbits in her costume. When she started working Reno and Vegas and Atlantic City, she trimmed it down to a G-string. She added juggling to her act.

Later, after coaching, she added singing and dancing. But her fans did not care what she did; they wanted Carol, not the gimmicks. Theatres in Las Vegas or Reno showed on their marquees just ‘CAROLITA!' - nothing more. Sometimes she would stop in the middle of juggling and say, I'm too tired to juggle tonight and, anyhow, W. C. Fields did it better,' and she would walk out on the runway and stop, hands on her hips, dressed in a G-string and a smile, and say, ‘Let's get better acquainted. You, there! Pretty little girl in a blue dress. What's your name, dear? Will you throw me a kiss? If I throw you one, will you eat it or throw it back to me?' or, ‘Who has a birthday tonight? Hold up your hands.'

In a theatre crowd at least one in fifty is having a birthday, not one in three hundred and sixty-five. She would ask them to stand, and would repeat each name loudly and clearly - then ask all the crowd to sing Happy Birthday with her, and when the doggerel reached ‘Happy Birthday, dear - ‘ the band would stop and Carol would sing out each first name, pointing at the owner: ‘ - dear Jimmy, Ariel, Bebe, Mary, John, Philip, Amy, Myrtle, Vincent, Oscar, Vera, Peggy' - hand cue and the band would hit it - ‘Happy Birthday to you!'

If visitors had been allowed to vote, Carolita could have been elected mayor of Las Vegas by a landslide.

I once asked her how she remembered all those names. She answered, ‘It's not hard, Mama, when you want to remember. If I make a mistake, they forgive me - they know I've tried: She added, ‘Mama, what they really want is to think that I am their friend - and I am.'