I want to send out a special thank you out to Callum's second-grade teacher.  Thank you so much for assigning a diorama project.  I love those!  What fun!  Especially at this time of year.  It's not like there are lights to be hung, cookies to be baked, Christmas cards to be addressed, mantles to be decorated and gifts to be crafted (not to mention laundry, cooking, cleaning and grocery shopping).

A mid-afternoon delivery of beer and fudge got us through it.  Callum especially appreciated the beer.  (It's a JOKE, people.  No need to go hit speed-dial for social services.)

And we present:  the desert habitat diorama.  Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night.

P.S.  Thank you all so much for your comments, calls and e-mails checking in on sweet Violet.  She's fine now.  Was back home that evening, and back to her old self by the next day.  She'd had a reaction to her distemper vaccine and went into anaphylactic shock.  Thank God we were still there and have such a great vet in Dr. Dragon (no kidding, that's her name!).  She's been milking it like nobody's business, and you know what.  I agree, she deserves some extra loving.

I actually think it's going to be hard for me to write a post about my granddad.  My heart is too full. Today is his birthday.  He would have been 98.  He died of pneumonia in 2004.  The old man's friend.  I still miss him a lot.  Of the three grandparents who were part of my growing up, this man, my dad's dad, was the one I was closest to.  When I was a little, little girl, I called him Banka.  My grandmothers were amazing women (go here and here to see what I mean), and we were close, but my grandpa played with me and talked to me.  That was pretty special.

We played a lot.  My dad has the same sense of play that my grandpa had, and that makes for a great parent and grandparent.  Once, some Thanksgiving or Christmas, Dad, Grandpa and I were all playing football in the backyard, and my dad threw a bomb to my Grandpa.  I wasn't that young, maybe in junior high (remember before it was middle school?) or early high school, which meant that Grandpa wasn't that young either.  He jumped up to catch the ball and came down flat on his back.  Dad and I were so worried,  we dashed to the other end of the field to find Grandpa still lying there.  He was laughing so hard he couldn't get up, but he still had possession of the ball. 

He had a great smile and a great laugh and the sweetest, gentlest spirit of any man you could ever know.  He also had a hard life.  He was the third eldest of nine children, but when Grandpa was very young, the eldest died within days of each other from diphtheria.  His father was a brutal, abusive alcoholic who eventually abandoned his family, and my grandfather never spoke of him.  When Grandpa's own mother finally died (at 96...I have longevity on my side, it would seem!) and my dad went to the funeral, she was buried next to my great-grandfather.  Looking at the marker, my dad realized that because my grandfather never spoke of him, he had never learned his own grandfather's name.

When he was in high school (am I right about that time frame, Dad?) Grandpa was sent to live with a childless family to "work" for them.  Let's not put too fine a point on this.  My great-grandfather needed money, so he essentially sold his son to these people.  Grandpa was still able to go to school, but his life was one of hard work and loneliness.  He worried, as well, about the brothers and sisters left behind in that brutal household.  He was, for a time, valedictorian of his high school class, but didn't want to give a speech at graduation so he let his grades slip a bit.  The family he'd been sent to live with offered to send him to college, but only if he'd consent to being a teacher.  Grandpa didn't want to be a teacher, so he didn't go.  I wonder how his life would be different if he hadn't had such a strong spirit.   This dog in the picture with him was named Mickey.  My grandmother always said that after Mickey died they couldn't bear to get another dog, and I always wondered how much of that was her and not him.

He grew up Lutheran, but before marrying my grandmother joined her Methodist church.  He didn't discuss this with her before hand, just went and did it and presented his decision as a fait accompli.  They had a funny marriage that way.  Not a lot of talking things over, but full of love.  Grandpa ended up being the treasurer of their church, and he based his opinion of their minister on the length of the sermon.  Too long and Grandpa was not too impressed.  When they built a new sanctuary, Grandpa chose the stained glass windows.  They're beautiful, unusual and modern.  Not what you'd expect, and that was my granddad.  Not what you'd expect.

Every Christmas he'd take me to the local floral shop to buy some poinsettias and order flowers to be delivered to my mother and grandmothers.  This was a lovely tradition, one I wish we could get moving here.  I guess Christmas is much on my mind because also at Christmas every year he'd get my Grandmother a gorgeous piece of jewelry.  We'd all wait to see what was in the little box this year.  Traditions were important to us...I'd give him Old Spice every Christmas.

Have you ever seen those signs on the side of the road, "Watch for Falling Rock"?  Well Grandpa would tell me a wonderful story about an Indian Princess named Falling Rock.  He let me play endlessly with his hair, making it "stribbly," and placed countless orders for food in my "restaurant."  As I got older, he didn't just talk to me, he confided in me.  Things about my dad and his growing up.  Things about his own marriage.  He loved golf and Redskins football, reading and his family.  We we once at a diner for breakfast and made him laugh so hard that coffee and blueberry muffin came out of his nose.  VO and 7Up always seemed like a classy drink because my Grandpa drank it, and every margarita he had was, "The best margarita I ever tasted."

On my birthday in 1992 Grandpa had a massive stroke that nearly killed him.  Mentally and physically he never really recovered.  He went in and out of one nursing home and then back in another in the twelve years he lived after that stroke.  After the stroke he learned to walk again and even moved back home for awhile.  That, to him, was a great triumph, living at home again.  But he wasn't the same man really.  Reading took a concentration he no longer had; he even lost the taste for coffee and iced tea.  Where he'd once been proud and confident, he became crotchety and worried.  While Neel was in graduate school we lived near my grandparents and took them out to eat nearly every Sunday.  Invariably Grandpa would complain when we were minutes late.  One of my favorite lines from this time, I may have blogged about it before, is one that appears in our family lexicon a lot.  As we were driving back from an outing with my dad and both my grandparents, Grandpa worried that we'd be late for his dinner at the nursing home.  My dad tried valiantly to reassure him, but Grandpa said, "You may tell me not to worry, but I am worried."  We all still use that one.

When he died, I felt overwhelming sadness, but what surprised me was the relief.  It was as if his death freed him for me.  It freed my memories at least.  It was as if seeing him as he was made it too hard to remember him as he had been.  I got him back, in a way, when he died.  Neel spoke at his funeral, under the stained glass windows Grandpa chose, in the sanctuary where he hadn't attended in so long, Neel made everyone really see what kind of man my Granddad had been.  Neel talked about how it was a shame Grandpa had died before learning Joe Gibbs was coming back to coach his beloved Redskins (I like to think that Grandpa got to heaven and whispered a suggestion in God's ear), and my dad told a story about being a kid and watching a man ask his dad for money.  Grandpa didn't give him money, but took the man into the restaurant they were passing and bought him a meal.  That was the kind of man he was.

I love that last picture of him.  He looks so handsome and debonair.  That's how I like to remember him.  Standing strong.  Strong handshake.  He kept that strong handshake even after his stroke.  For a long time I wondered if it would have been better if he'd just died outright.  Those nursing homes were hard on all of us.  And then I realized that in those twelve years he saw me get married and met his great-grandson.  So those memories aren't all bad.  I have a great memory of a very young Callum, three maybe, sharing a bag of potato chips with Grandpa, and that is a very nice memory to have.  At his funeral, little four-year old Callum was one of the pall bearers, and that makes me very proud.  Happy Birthday Banka.  Your Redskins are 5-7, and you have the Bears on Thursday night.  You may tell me not to worry, but I am worried.  I love you.

"Thanksgiving is nothing without the turkey," or so says my eight-year old, and I suppose he has a point.  We've celebrated many other ways.  Goat curry (no lie) at my in laws.  In San Diego we had so many international friends that we ended up with quite a feast.  Nineteen or twenty people from around the world would join us at our tiny condo for a world-bazaar of a potluck.  The Germans were always on time.  The Indians were always late.  The Welsh were indecipherable.  The Australians were always drunk.  Good times that.  Some of my favorite Thanksgivings were around those packed and colorful tables. 

It's different here.  Families eat with families, and while sometimes we've celebrated with friends, more often than not, it's the three of us.  And I like it that way.  Last year when I tried to minimize the hugeness of a turkey dinner for three people by serving a pork tenderloin, I caught no end of hell from Callum.  So this year a turkey. All eleven pounds.  The smallest I could find.  We'll be having turkey for days.

Callum was a big help this year.  We have a family tradition of making chestnut stuffing for the turkey.  My dad and I always made it together while listening to Vivaldi's Four Seasons, and I had Callum and Neel's good help this year.  The Blood Marys helped some too... When I was growing up, my job was the relish tray, and at eight, I felt it was time that Callum started to carry this torch.  I got him his very own tray, and he did a great job, don't you think?

Add to that Megan's Sweet Potato Casserole and my grandmother's corn in her Fiestaware bowl.  Not a bad day for three sick kids.

The girls did their part, working hard.  Especially Sweet Violet.

We have a blessing that we say at our table most nights and I'll share it with you sometime.  I loved Amy's though.  It seems especially appropriate around here these days.

Let us rise up and be thankful, for if we didn't lean a lot today, at least we learned a little, and if we didn't learn a little, at least we didn't get sick, and if we got sick, at least we didn't die; so let us all be thankful. --Buddha

Wow.  Love that.  Just love it.  So family.  Just family this Thanksgiving, and for that I am very grateful.  But get geared up, for the wild rumpus is just beginning.  I love this time of year.  Family today.  Friends from here on out.

To say that we're all on the mend over here might be overstating it a little.  Callum's doing much better, although he's still getting tired easily, but I'm still fighting a fever and coughing like a tuberculosis patient waiting to catch a plane for his honeymoon, and Neel and I are both blowing our noses enough to go through several boxes of those.  Ugh.  This virus has lasted a long time.

In the meantime, autumn has burst into technicolor and I miss my little life and my little blog and oh, Thanksgiving, I've barely had a chance to give you a thought.  We mustered the energy to get to the grocery store today and the counters are littered with all the fixings for tomorrow. 

I've had so much I wanted to say about Thanksgiving.  It really is my favorite holiday.  We've spent it many different ways, but this year it'll be just the three of us (That was the plan even before the plague hit!).  I'm so glad.  That's how Thanksgivings were for me growing up, quiet "just us guys" time, and all I want is my family with me right now.

So I've made the first small step towards setting the table, and I'm really hoping to check back in tomorrow with some less congested updates on food and family fun.  I miss everybody.  Slurp.

8% scarier this year.

We had our first real snap in the air last night  and decided to have supper by the fire.  So far the super-dorky structured approach seems to be helping me out quite a bit.  Where ever I had a curve ball, I just shifted that meal to the next week, and it's clear that this one is now a staple.  Neel likes my version better, and I like his.  This just follows my theory that you like the best the food that someone makes you.  But the warm, slightly spicy noodles and the stewed chicken were perfect for this crisp evening.  As was the fire.

Our living room is one of my favorite rooms in our house, and I love how it can smell like woodsmoke even in the dead of summer.  It was lovely to have a weeknight fire and lovely to eat dinner in front of it.  I plan on doing it a lot this winter.

Everybody seemed to like it, so why not?

That's my mom. She's the one with the sheaf of corn colored hair. The small person in the fierce pink cords is me. I did not get her thick wave of hair. Her birthday is the day after Callum's which, you'd think, would be, "oh, how nice," but really, as we're totally focused on this only grandchild, sometimes I imagine his Ama must feel as if she's waving madly from the wings.

I felt extra-cognizant of that this year for some reason, so I was very focused on getting her gift off to her in time. I made her my new favorite reversible apron in some amazing Freshcut fabrics and put another goodie in besides. The day I knew I needed to mail it was the day after Labor Day, still the start of school, and the same day that I left her package, my watch, phone and lunch at home (I did however, remember a friend's socks that he probably won't need for six months.). Neel gallantly rushed home to mail the package, but because I needed it to be on time, it was unwrapped with no card. When he got back from the UPS Store, he told me that the package would get there on Thursday...a full day before it needed to. I could have waited. It could have been wrapped. It could have had a card. But hey, it got there in time.

My mom is someone I would have liked to have known when she was a child. Not that I don't like knowing her now, but the stories I hear of her childhood sound particularly fierce. She decided when she was around Callum's age that her given name, "Mary" was a little pedestrian. In order to add a little more...I don't know...heft to her persona, she added her middle name, and ever after was known as the very non-pedestrian "Mary Jane." She's been Mary Jane ever since, and goes by "MJ" a lot now. It always sounded so funny to hear my aunt or cousins or grandmother call her "Mary." As if they had the wrong person. She marched on Washington with her chuch for civil rights, she was runner up to the Apple Festival Queen, and she went far, far away from Illinois, deep into the south for college where she met my dad.

My mom and I are a lot a like. I got her headaches (thanks, mom), and her quirky snap-judgements (now those I actually enjoy!). Of all our family lexicon of phrases, my mom has created some of my favorites. Once, when my dad snapped the point of a pencil, she exclaimed as if hit with a tremendous revelation, "You press down and break things!" We like to shop together (that took a lot of hard work through my teenage years) and have very similar taste in houses, furnishings and clothes. When one of us gets new clothes and the other doesn't, we actually feel (a little) guilty.

She can skim the surface of the modern world with no tv and no plans to get one, but my mom knew yoga before yoga cool. And vegetarianism. And reiki. You name it. She got there before you.

Her mother, owner of a children's clothing store, was my official dresser, and my mom has taken over that role for Callum. Only she uses Garnet Hill and Mini Boden. She likes keeping him in shoes and cool clothes. They can cook together and read together, but Callum knows that clothes come from Ama. When he was opening his presents this weekend, he came to the last box from Ama, he said, "Oh! I hope it's clothes!"

Somehow, sometimes, we manage to do things right. Happy Birthday, Mom. Hope your weekend's been a knock-out.

Today is my Grandma Charlotte's birthday. She would have turned 95.

I had two remarkable and very different women for grandmothers. My Grandma Charlotte was proud, loving, loyal, glamorous and stubborn. Both of my grandmothers could dress it up and turn heads, but where my Grandma Mercedes had a down-to-earth beauty, Grandma Charlotte seemed to personify that willow-waisted chic of the forties and fifties. This was a woman who wore pearls and pumps to the most casual of occasions. Even her house slippers had a heel! She was from the "keeping up appearances" generation and it showed. Her life skills reflected her generation as well. She played Pinochle every Friday with friends and could shuffle cards so quickly and sharply that you barely saw her hands move. Fitted sheets were as crisply folded as flat ones, a skill I have never been able to duplicate.

Oh her first date with my Grandad, she mistakenly thought he was from Royalton, PA...the wrong side of the tracks. They were on a blind date, out with another couple and she said, "Good evening," when he picked her up at the door, and "Thank you very much," when he dropped her off. Not a word in between.

She worked for the State Police of Pennsylvania for 26 years. When she finally retired, several years after my grandfather, she quit cooking too. From then on, crackers and cereal were stored in her oven. She was the oddest character about food. She liked her steaks well done and has had chefs in upscale restaurants ridicule her choice. For most of her life she didn't eat "fowl." No chicken, turkey, duck or bird of any kind. As a child she'd heard a sizzle from a chicken roasting in an oven and swore off them ever since. Christmas dinner for my grandmother consisted of a side plate with a (well-done) piece of ham, and a bowl of mashed potatoes over which she poured white shoepeg corn cooked in milk and sugar. She wouldn't even eat the chestnut stuffing we cooked independently of our Christmas turkey. I make her recipe for sandtart cookies at Christmas. Hers were so thin you could see through them, but she always said they were, "not as thin as my mother's."

She loved shrimp cocktail, Brandy Alexanders, Lambrusco with ice cubes, and would order fried oysters just to eat the breading.

Her thoughts on a good marriage, when she learned that Neel and I were engaged, were, "He always had his money, I always had my money, and I bought all his clothes." She was a marathon shopper and a clothes horse in her own right. When she and my Grandad would come to visit, my Grandmother always seemed ultra lady-like, mysterious almost. She had a special pink suitcase just for her cosmetics, a special silk pillow and billowy nightgowns, the likes of which I'd never seen on women my own mother's age.

While she always seemed so ladylike to me, it was clear that she and my Grandad had some rollicking good times together. They loved to travel and photo albums were filled with shots of trip after trip, all with great captions like, "The Gang, Recovering." or "The Compleat Angler." Under several photos of my Grandma is the name "Butch" in quotes. Neel will love that one. He feels that no one in Central Pennsylvania is called by their true name. "His name is John, but they call him Pete." My dad was Skip and my grandma was Chots.

After ten years of marriage, when she hadn't been feeling well, she walked up the street to the family doctor. Her doctor laughed and said, "Charlotte, you don't have the flu. You're pregnant!" She looked at him, said, "You're a goddamned liar," and walked out the door. He called out to her, "See you next month!" She wouldn't turn around and speak to him and she refused to believe him. When my dad was born, it was deep, deep summer. The hottest part of the year. Grandma raved about the then-tiny Hershey Medical Center. They brought her steak and ice cream and gave her back rubs every day for a week.

Grandma holding my dad at four months old.

Of course she was something of a liar too. Neel likes to say, about Grandma Charlotte, that while she was a cup half empty person, she'd tell you that it was half full. If she were still alive, she would tell you that my Grandma Mercedes had joined us on a family trip to New England (she hadn't). She would tell you where my Grandfather was when the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor (whereever she said, he wasn't), and she would tell you that there were 250 cows in the field we'd just passed when there were only maybe a dozen. This was to win one of those pass-the-time road trip games (whichever side of the car counted the most cows won), and she always won.

My grandfather had a massive stroke on my birthday in 1992. It nearly killed him. He was mostly instutionalized for the remaining 12 years of his life. Before he went into the hospital, she'd never paid a bill herself or even written a check. For the last dozen years of their nearly 69-year marriage, she went to see him at the nursing home every day. Going up just after lunch and coming home right before dinner. Of course she also liked to say that she hadn't been "shawpin'" since Grandpa's stroke, even though my father and I stood by, okay, we encouraged her to get some new things many times.

She loved my dad so much, and was so proud of him, even when she didn't always understand him. I often think that generation gap is one of the biggest. The parents who were coming of age between the two big wars, and the children who came of age during Vietanam. From the fifties on at least, we have rock and roll to unite us. During Hurricane Agnes in 1972 she dreamed of running water and got out of bed only to step into ankle deep water. My grandparent's house was the highest on the street and every night the neighbors would gather therr while they waited for the flood waters to receed. She lived exactly three miles away from this place, and when the accident occurred she and my Grandad came to Tennessee and stayed with us for a week.

She was a great teaser and could handle being teased as well. How many times did we jump in and say, "Mind the step." as we left her house, knowing that if we didn't say it, she surely would?
She was one of the most stubborn women I've ever met. I think the whole chicken thing is pretty good evidence of that. She managed to be too sick to attend my Grandfather's funeral, and she died exactly one year minus one day after he did. I think she felt that she couldn't face the anniversary of his death, so she made sure she didn't have to.

This is the house she lived in when she died. She and my Grandad lived there for most of my childhood and adulthood. I love it that my own house has that same sharply pitched roof. When we'd come and visit, every morning we'd congregate on the front porch, read the paper and have TastyKakes and Uban Coffee for breakfast. I can still call up the smell, the feel of the green shag carpet, and the way the light looked with all of the curtains drawn all day. She always had Moyer's potato chips for us, licorice all sorts and Mexican Hats. A few weeks ago, I was walking out of Jean and Paul's kitchen, down the steps to the backyard, and I was instantly back in the basement of that house. The steps looked the same and the creak of my tread was the same, instantly recognizable.

Oh how I miss her. She drove me, well she drove us all crazy at times, but I sure miss her. That's how death works on you I guess. You go along living and accepting both the grief and absence until suddenly you'd give anything to rush back to that place where you can smell her Coty face powder and take a shower in the bathroom with the flamingos on the shower stall and the shower head so low it hits your shoulders instead of your head. We all had so much fun together. Happy Birthday, Grandma. Love you...

Remember this? Well, my Dad decided that an unexpected visit was just the thing for all of us and WOOSH, here he was the very next day! We have plans to eat and shop and go to the beach A LOT. Posting may be light, but I have so much to show and tell. A great party and some stuff crankin' out of the bluerainroom coming up!

Everyone is thrilled, including Lucy the hound, who really seemed to discover Dad's presence about 5 hours after he arrived and only then started zooming around the house, biting his feet to entice him to play.

We're entering the season of birthdays around here, so expect a few more posts along these lines. Today is my Grandma Mercedes' birthday. My mom's mom. She would have been 92. She died in August, three years ago, just over a month after turning 89.

She made all of her grandchildren quilts. I'm the youngest grandchild and my quilt had been sent out to be finished (she did the cross-stitching and had someone else do the quilting and binding.) when she got sick. She never saw it finished, and at her funeral so many of her friends (the church ladies) were so sorry that they didn't have it for me. I went back to her hometown the following month to help my mom finish packing up her apartment and the quilt was waiting for me. It felt good to have it happen that way, connecting me with her even after she was gone.

She was an amazing cook and baker - the kind who could taste a dish and tell you what was in it. Her corn pudding ("makes a nice dish to take to a pot luck") is not to be believed. Thank God I have the recipe because it made our neighbor Tyler nearly swoon. Next time I make it, I'll post the recipe so you can swoon too. No peach cobbler was made without extra crust for piecrust cookies, and I make her thumbprint cookies every year at Christmas.

I have quite a few of her things and use them a lot. The juicer that's been (I think) featured here and above I use at least once a week.

When packing up her apartment, my mom and I had a minor battle over who got this pitcher. We'd left it undecided, but when all the stuff I chose was shipped to me and the pitcher was inside, I was thrilled. It gets a lot of use around here too.

This painting of my dad's, which now sits on my mantle, hung in her dining room for years. I love that it's his and hers and now mine. It symbolizes to me how much she loved and accepted my dad (a hippie artist!) for who he was.

She was the only child of distantly affectionate parents (making Callum a 4th generation only) and as a little girl she survived this.

When her husband (my maternal granddad) developed rheumatoid arthritis and had to stop working, she did some research and opened a children's clothing store called The Weathervane Shop. Her shop thrived (and paid the bills) for years. I could expect Christmas and Easter dresses from her every year. I'm sure that's a big part of why I love clothes so much (you'll have to tune back in for a post on my Grandma Charlotte to see another big part!)

She was a staunch democrat and would be thrilled to have Barak Obama as her senator. He was elected the year she died, and it's a shame she didn't get to vote for him. Her faith guided her feelings, both political and personal, and she encouraged her daughter (my mom) to join their minister at the March on Washington for civil rights. Didn't someone make a speech there? It was 1963, I think...

Once mad at a story about a boy who "done me wrong" (my first hint never to date Steves), she told me that she'd tell him to "goose it up his ass."

One year, I was a tween maybe, some cousins were visiting me, and my slightly older cousin Jennifer and Grandma and I shared a room. Someone (not me, of course) let loose this little fart that sent Jennifer and me into fits of giggles. Perhaps she decided to teach us some clearly lacking decorum, so Grandma trotted out the phrase, "pass gas." We'd never heard it before, but oh my GOD, way, way funnier than "fart." The room would go quiet until someone would whisper "pass gas," and all three of us would be sent off into giggles again.

Animals loved her. They sense a kindred spirit, I think. We had one fierce attack-Australian Shepherd growing up who barked her dang-fool head off if someone even thought about our front door and made it tricky for me to have friends over. My Grandma would show up after a six-month absence, and Molly would turn into a wagging, licking, wreathed-in-smiles tub of love. That kind of love worked for her great-granddogs too. When Neel and I moved to California, we drove our sheltie-border collie mix Phoebe across the country with us, stopping in Illinois on the way. Grandma had a bird named Ditto at the time who had free-rein of the house. When we ran into some hotel trouble (were dogs allowed?), she grew indignant and said, "Well, she can stay here..." That sentence has turned into a declaration of love in my family.

These are photos of our guest room. We call it the lavendar room around here. It's a sweet room, (I hope) cozy and restful the way a guestroom should be. My grandmother's favorite color was purple, and it wasn't until after her death that I realized that so much of that room reflected her. The bed and dresser were hers, the painting over the bed came to me when she died. When I went to put the quilt on the bed, I was terrified to discover a pee stain...probably Phoebe, I don't think it's been on the bed since Lucy got here. Gingerly I washed it, thinking that of all people, Grandma wouldn't mind. She'd be glad Pheebs got some comfort for her old bones on that bed.

But here's my favorite story about my Grandma. When Neel and I were getting engaged, he was in graduate school and we were poor, poor, poor. Grandma Mercedes gave us a ring to use as an engagement ring. We'd designed a wedding ring for me that was fairly clunky and didn't look good with a solitare, so our plan was to wear the engagement ring and take it off once we were married. I wore my wedding band alone for the next eight years. The day after she died, I was home making plans, buying plane tickets and packing. I took a time out to try to settle down and watch some tv, but my nervous energy had me fussing (as it usually did) with my wedding ring. It felt funny. Like I had a crumb caught up under it. When I turned it over to investigate the band was snapped in half. As clear as anything I heard, "Wear my ring." I'm not surprised, she could often be pissy and alternately bossy (just ask my mom). So I did what she said. Took my wedding band off, put on her ring, and Neel and I decided to get a new wedding band to match. So I wear her ring. (And Dad, the fact that I can't get a decent picture of those rings is why I want a new camera!)

I love this picture of her. It was taken about four years ago, on our move back across the country. It really captures her, I think. We were at a restuarant (what was the name of that place, mom?) in a state park that served amazing food like fried chicken, green beans, corn and pudding. We were all together...my mom and dad, my aunt, all my cousins and their spouses and her two great grandsons. What a gift that must have been. When she died, all of the grandchildren had the same thought and brought their copies of this picture. It's her.

This morning Callum asked if I was sad, and I said no, not really. It's nice to think about her and remember her. I'm glad I get to do that here. Happy Birthday, Eyeore.

Last night, as he has done many times, my dad sat outside in his yard, smoking his one cigar of the year, drinking Couvoisier and listening to jazz as he ushered in his birthday. This alone shows what a brave man my dad is. It's hot, muggy and buggy in East Tennessee right now, three things he loathes, but he faces them down with valor to see his birthday in right.

Poet, painter, sculptor and painter again, he pulses with the need to work, to create. Whether researching a new TV, watching the NFL Draft or re-crafting himself as an artist, he approaches projects with intensity and passion. He wants to go to Egypt, he wants to play the sax, he wants to play professional football. He taught me and he teaches me how to dream.

I've never met anyone, young or old, with his capacity for play. All of my stuffed animals had names and voices and personalities, and if he tired of playing with me (which, you know he had to!), I never saw it. He was ready to help me dig deep into any project, whether it was building a tent in my room out of blankets or a playhouse in our back yard. Once, when I was a little girl, a family friend warned him to be careful, that if he didn't watch, I wouldn't know the difference between real and pretend. My dad thought about this for a second, and responded, "I'm not sure I do." Now that I'm an adult, we shop together, cook together and watch TV together, generating an almost criminal amount of fun. That gift for play has transcended to grandfatherhood. Together they learn how to crash their XBOX Tony Hawk into innocent bystanders and boogie board bigger than expected waves. Callum has some of the best granddads a kid could hope for.

He bought himself a red sports car as a present for my graduation from college.

One of the greatest compliments he ever received came at a wedding he attended when I was a teenager. "Is that Mary Jane's husband? He looks like Ringo Starr."

He's reluctant to move from PC to Mac, no matter how much we push, because he doesn't want to give up Free Cell.

He's taught me about so much, like malts and Miles Davis and all-day baked beans and peanut butter and jelly potato chip sandwiches.

He has a model train running along the ceiling of his kitchen and he's painted Egyptian Tomb paintings on his stairwell.

He loves blueberries and for years my mom would make him a blueberry pie we called "Blueberry Delight" for his birthday cake.

When my September babe was born, he traded out his current earring for a sapphire, and I haven't seen him without it since.

Even though he hasn't smoked one for years and years, I can't smell pipe smoke without thinking of him. We wish he were here.

Happy Birthday Dad. I love you. Neel loves you, and Callum loves you too.