Sabby, Lily’s adopted mother, was not necessarily my favorite character, but she was at the top of my favorite characters to write.

When I first wrote Sabby, I had in my mind the character of a sassy black woman, but one with a lot of heart.  Lily always says that Sabby “goes all Claire Huxtable on people”, and that’s kind of who I had in mind when I wrote Sabby.  I mean, maybe she was physically different.  In my mind, she was always a little darker, just a little plumper, a little more well-endowed…  maybe a little shorter.  I always thought of Sabby as beautiful, but not necessarily in a statuesque kind of way.  Maybe more like in a motherly kind of way.

But she was modeled after Claire Huxtable (of the Cosby Show) in a few ways.  The most obvious was that she was a genuinely caring woman with a temper and a protective instinct like a lion, and when she went off, you’d better listen or else.  And it’s not even that she’d scream or yell, she’d just get quiet and clipped with her voice, and then if you didn’t listen, you were gonna get smacked.

But as the story progressed, Sabby’s character deepened.  She wasn’t just a one-dimensional sassy block woman character.  She lost her parents at an early age, made a lot of bad decisions, had foster parents that she had decidedly mixed feelings about.  She also had a fairly well hidden stream of insecurity about her, like she sometimes didn’t really feel like she deserved the good life she had.  And towards the end, when Katie asked her and Lily to be little Sabrina’s god-daughter, she was rather introspective about it.

I want you to make one more promise to us,” Sabby said.  “If you’re serious about this.”

Katie nodded.  “Anything.”

“Well, we’ll see.  I want you to promise that, when you find another man, that you will take our opinions of him seriously.  You…  already made one bad choice, and…  I will not have my goddaughter having a, well… you know… as a stepfather.”

Katie’s face contorted a little, but then she relaxed and nodded.  “I hate that.  It makes me a little angry.  But…  you’re right.  It’s best for her.”

Sabby blew out a breath.  “That was not fun to say,” she said.  “I know I have this reputation as a lion, and Lily likes to say I ‘go all Claire Huxtable on people’” – I giggled and she shot me a look – “but it’s not an easy thing to do,” she said, rather softly for her.  She looked at me.  “I hate doing it,” she said, “and if you tell anyone else, I’ll deny it.  But I hate having to say these things, I hate having to be a lion.”  She actually deflated a little.  “But I’ll do what I need to do for my family.  For family I have, and…  and for family I chose.”  She reached down, and in an uncharacteristic gesture for Sabby, she stroked Katie’s face a little.  “This makes you family too,” she said, softly.  “And I’ll be a lion for you too.”

Sabby takes her role as a mother very seriously, and she wasn’t a lion because that was her nature, but because that’s what she felt she had to be for people she cared about.

Sabby is also a very… moral… character.  It’s not because she’s perfect – far from it – but because the feels strongly about those things.  Lily’s pretty grounded, but Sabby’s always Lily’s moral rock.  She’s one of only a few people who can call her out on her crap and have Lily actually listen (Cat-girl/Anathema is another).  Multiple times in the story, she called Lily out on one of her major flaws – the desire to please people because of the fear she’ll lose them.

I liked writing Sabby, and that’s partly because I didn’t always know which facets of Sabby’s character would show.  Or be revealed.  She may not be my absolute favorite character, but she might have been the most interesting character to write.  Lily loved her for a reason, and maybe the reader would grow to understand that as the story progresses.

Lily alluded to this at the very end, but Sabby’s actually conservative.  She’s not quite a Trump supporter or MAGA, but she’s got a good head on her shoulders, and knows how much damage misplaced compassion can cause.  Dave…  was more liberal.  I didn’t say too much about that because this wasn’t a political story and Lily was not a political girl, but Dave did start to come around around the time of the fateful Joe Biden debate.  Sabby and Dave still have… ummm… words sometimes.

I’ll write more about Dave soon, but I’ll say this:  while I wrote Dave as more liberal, he’s more of an old school liberal, you know, like Bill Maher or some of the old-school Democrats.  He was still a good father to Lily, and she did love him deeply.  And he would have protected her if he’d needed to.

In my story, race was not something to be ignored, and it was not something to be celebrated, either.  It was just something that…  was.  Sabby was black.  Dave was white.  Lily was half-Japanese.  Emiko was full Japanese.  Beth and David were half-black (what we would have called “mulatto” back when that was more of a descriptive word than anything else – and it’s funny because this is the first time I actually realized David is half-black).  Liz and Jack were Chinese.  Diana was Mexican.  Crystal was… white, I think.  I don’t think I ever explicitly said but that’s just how I imagined her.  Lily had friends and family of all races, colors, etc…  and it was never a big deal.  Only Yu, Rebecca’s friend, had SJW tendencies, and her friends mostly just patted her on the head and went on with their lives.  That was a deliberate choice.  It wasn’t a big deal to Lily… neither in a positive or negative way.  No one in the story had any hate in them – but they also didn’t put anyone on a pedestal because of what they were.  It’s just something that was, and people just accepted whatever and moved on.  Black or white, Lily didn’t care what Sabby was, as long as she made her ample chest available to cry on when Lily needed it.  Or maybe more accurately because she made her ample chest available to cry on when Lily needed it.

That’s the kind of world I want to live in.

Because, frankly, any issues with race today are issues of culture, and that’s a whole other can of worms I’m not opening here.