Cold Medicine

     The Beverly Hillbillies. Yes, thinking of bits from the comic pages in my last post got me to remembering scenes from old television shows. Whenever I hear the phrase cure for the common cold, I am immediately reminded of an episode of the Beverly Hillbillies. In the episode, one of the characters complained of having a cold, and Granny said she would fix up a batch of her

remedy! Well, Mr. Drysdale, the family's banker, heard Granny, and he thought this was his ticket to getting rich. If he could get Granny to share the remedy with him, he could sell it and become wealthy enough to retire. The world has long been looking for the cure for the common cold! Mr. Drysdale spent the entire episode trying to cajole from Granny her recipe for the remedy, and she spent the time resisting. I don't remember why she wouldn't tell him except that she was perhaps thinking it was no big deal and Mr. Drysdale was always being so obnoxious with his get rich quick schemes, and they had to stretch it out to a half hour anyway.

      The climax of the episode was of course Granny finally agreeing to tell Mr. Drysdale her magic ingredients. What she then shared with him sounded much like the recipe for chicken soup followed with the instructions to “eat the soup, and in a week or ten days, the cold will be gone.” The punchline here is that a week or ten days is how long colds usually last anyway, and in the end Mr. Drysdale was still not rich.

       Why did this amuse me enough to remember all these years? The stars were aligned, I guess, for me to be receptive at that point in time to the set up and the punchline and to appreciate Granny's cure for the common cold. Forever after, if someone has a cold, I tell them I have a cure – and the cure takes a week to ten days. It won't make me rich, but sometimes they smile, and that's worth something, don't you think?

20200430 55 Cold Medicine

Where's the Beef?

     It surprises me the different bits over the years from the comics pages that shaped who my family and I became. I have a story I tell about my Mom and her love of Garfield the lasagna eating cat. 

Mom's phone looked kinda like this

 Of the various Garfield paraphernalia Mom purchased over the years, there was a Garfield landline phone which I myself thought was gaudy and a tad scary – I got a dollar for it in a garage sale after Mom passed away. Checking on the internet today, I underestimated by a long shot what some folks like and what they are willing to pay for such nostalgia!

     As a kid, my Dad sometimes called me Lucy Van Pelt, from Peanuts. When he called me that, he was referring to my being a bossy big sister to my brothers. I did not like being called bossy, and I did not get where Lucy was being bossy either!

     And my mentioning Snoopy lying on his doghouse in my previous post reminded me of Hagar and my favorite Hagar the Horrible bit.

     Hagar was walking with someone, I think it was his son. And they came upon a group of men lying on their backs – each on his own elevated stone couch. The men were silent – some gazing upward at the sky, some with eyes closed. Hagar explained to his son that these men were the philosopher kings. They contemplated the great questions of the universe and over time imparted their wisdom to the masses. The philosopher kings were considered the most highly respected citizens of the land. Hagar and his son walked off, and when gone, one of the philosopher kings said, “what do you want for lunch?” and another philosopher king responded, “I don't know, what do you want for lunch?”

     This just tickled me so much! And ever since then I think of Hagar whenever I enter a room of supposedly important people. And with a grand swoop of my arm I say to myself “here be the philosopher kings - all thinking about lunch!”

20200422 54 Where's the Beef?

It Takes All Kinds

   

     In the midst of the safe-distancing due to coronavirus, I've been taking the opportunity to use up my stray note-cards, postcards, stationery to write to folks and hopefully brighten their physical mailboxes with a bit of color. I sent out more Happy Easter messages this April than ever before, and am now beginning to do Mothers Day greetings – hopefully, I will have thought of everyone in the next two weeks!

     One Mothers Day I especially remember was back in 1987. We were living in Oklahoma, and the girls and I were attending the First Presbyterian Church in Bartlesville on a somewhat regular basis. I had made friends with different women there, especially those with children close in age to my girls – I guess we just gravitated to one another. One woman in particular was in charge of the clown ministry at the church, and of course, I got involved with it too – although, it turns out I only dressed up in full clown-white a couple of times – but it was fun. Come to think of it, the girls and I were clowns at a nursing home one day, and I wrote up the story calling it Amanda Does a Party – Amanda was an infant in my arms, but dressed as a clown – a total hit of the afternoon!

     Anyway, my friend in charge of clown ministry was Sue. On Mothers Day I happened to ask if her family was doing anything special for her? She said her husband asked what celebratory meal he could fix for her – they always had their Sunday dinner at noon right after church. She told me she requested “lima beans and popcorn.”

     You know how a lot of thoughts can run through your head in an instant? Some of my immediate reactions were “is she mad at him and giving a smart-ass response?” and “is this a joke that I'm not getting – like maybe these are two things she hates?” or “are these the two things she likes best in the whole world?” and “who puts random lima beans and popcorn together in the same sentence?”

     It turns out Sue was serious! That was the meal she wanted. To her husband, it was not in the least an unusual request. Sue was content anticipating lima beans and popcorn when she got home!

     Over the many years since then I've come to realize popcorn and lima beans make a delightful request for a meal!

     There is a puzzle the girls had growing up that was my favorite – so much so that it still resides in our hall closet while the rest of their puzzles have found other homes. I have more fun putting it together with my grandchildren nowadays than the grandkids do. The puzzle has four separate scenes like in a comic strip. And indeed, the characters in the scenes are Snoopy and his trusty friend Woodstock. At the end Snoopy is saying, “It takes all kinds to make the world!”

     Old dog, new tricks!

20200422 53 it takes all kinds

The Thanks I Get

     My daughter was telling me on facetime about an early morning last week when she and her husband could hear their three-year old was up and about in his room. Sometimes he entertains himself a while before asking for them, and on this particular morning, his parents were hoping he'd let them sleep in a little longer.

     But this was not to be. Theo started calling for them and then rattled the knob to his bedroom door. He got a little louder insisting it was time to get up. And when his Mom and Dad did not reply quickly enough for him, they heard him say, “This is a waste of my time!”

Sarah at 3 and barefoot here

      I asked Amanda where Theo might have heard that phrase before? She looked a tad chagrined and said, “yeah, I wonder.”

     One might look perfect to the rest of the world, and then suddenly one is busted by the utterances of a toddler! And it is not only embarrassing at the moment when there isn't even anyone else around to witness your red face, but it continues to make you humble every time you remember the incident for decades to come!

     It was a Sunday morning at the Dewey house in Oklahoma, 1987. Amanda was a baby and likely not going to church with us. I was bouncing about getting myself ready, and I peeked into Sarah's room to see if she was making progress on getting dressed for church.

Amanda at 3 w angels and pandas

     Sarah was three years old. When I glanced into her room that morning, she was dressed and sitting on her floor. Her foot was in the air and Sarah was trying to put on a shoe. She was having trouble with it, and I heard her say in frustration, “And is this the thanks I get? No it is not!”

     Oh my gosh! Where had she heard that phrase? It was not something her Dad would have said although he was the source of a cuss Sarah picked up a couple of years later. No, what she said that morning had to have come from me. I'd like to think that I was just kidding when I said it, or it was directed at life in general and not at my child. And it was clear Sarah was not just imitating me but directing the comment at life in general. But of course, I took it personally, and how could Sarah have not taken it to heart when she heard me say it?

     I told the women's group at church what Sarah had said that morning – they thought it was a hoot! Maybe they identified with the mother or the daughter or both. Or maybe they laughed because I was such a singular screw-up. It is still a very embarrassing memory after all this time!

20200420 52 The Thanks I Get

Bush's Folly

So, our stimulus money arrived yesterday. It is a pending direct deposit to our checking account. We have for the most part been so fortunate as to be comfortable enough during the coronavirus crisis. But the money will come in handy - it can help pay a few of our early 2020 unexpected medical bills, and we may not have to dip into savings to cover them. We are welcoming the funds.

       Back in 2001, the newly sworn in President George W. Bush also sent checks to households. My daughters and I were going to get $600! I was not a fan of W. I thought his tax cuts were foolish. And I felt the personal checks were blatant bribes. The girls and I decided to spend the money on something extravagant - not something we needed or something we would have loved to have had if we only had the cash, but something completely off the wall, out of left field.

     We spent the entire $600 at the music store on a keyboard and stand. We set it up in the living room near the piano, thinking that both girls could maybe play at the same time, maybe create, jam, who knows? 

    The keyboard was nicknamed Bush’s Folly.

       And I don’t recall it ever being used.

        Folly indeed.

        That was nineteen years ago. The girls are grown and have their own places. And the piano eventually moved in with Sarah, Amanda having received one from her in-laws. I don’t play at all, but I’ve kept the keyboard for sentimental reasons and in hopes of the girls or grandkids playing it on occasions when they visit.

     The keyboard has been in different rooms of the house over all these many years. I keep it covered so I don’t have to dust it. Being home all day for the quarantine has had me moving things around. The keyboard is now in a corner of the dining room.

Floppy Disk Drive!!

 And today, when I saw the new stimulus money has arrived, I  was inspired to take the cloth off of Bush’s Folly so as to grab a picture to share here. Look how cute! There is a Floppy Disc Drive with a Yamaha disc in it! Oh gosh! Can’t resist. Guess what? I’m now listening to the Yamaha sampler! It is beautiful and I’m  so happy!

So much has happened since 2001. Ah those simpler times! Once I could waste a check on something irreverently named Bush’s Folly. Today, a new check is helping us pay for our older age medical costs, and the folly of yesteryear is playing soothingly in the background.

20200416 51 Bush’s Folly 

Raisins, Coconut, and Coffee Grounds

       There are another couple of kitchen stories I’d like to share about my grandmother. From these memories, you might think Granny was not a good cook. That is not the case! It’s just that one does not often think it is interesting enough to write about mashed potatoes, beef tips, and carrots smothered in dark rich gravy.

my Grandmother circa 1946

       Actually, mashed potatoes, beef tips, and carrots smothered in dark rich gravy is the meal she made for me at least twice a week when I was going to college and living with her. I remember telling one of the dorm students about this one time, and I literally saw his mouth start to water! And there I was, the grand-daughter ungrateful enough to think that dish was getting boring!

       Meat and potatoes were Granny’s usual entrees. She only did pasta maybe once a month or so, and it was always goulash – not spaghetti or mac ‘n cheese. The goulash was really good – she didn’t put green pepper in it like my Mom did.

 I don’t recall her cooking any rice dishes either, but there might have been.

       One time some green beans burned in a pan on the stove accompanied with the burnt smell. The next thing I knew, there was a smell of something else burning coming from the kitchen. My grandmother was in the kitchen the whole time. The green beans had been an accident. But what was this new event?

       I asked her what was going on, and she told me that the smell of coffee would cover up the burnt food smell. She just had not meant for the coffee grounds to boil dry and burn too!

       It was a toss-up as to which smell was worse!

       If it was lunch, dinner, or if you just dropped in for a visit, there was always dessert!

       Homemade! Lovely! Granny made cookies, pies, cakes. And they were all wonderful.

       There was something extra special about her cake icing. It is a tip that would come in handy for any of us.

       You know when you are making homemade icing, and the recipe calls for confectioners’ sugar? And you stir and you stir, but invariably small lumps of confectioners’ remain? Sometimes even bigger clumps of the white stuff can still be seen after the cake is frosted? What do you do?

       Well, that is when Granny would get out her supply of raisins. Or if raisins were not quite right for a particular cake, then coconut would do. A raisin on each spot, or a sprinkling of coconut over the whole cake not only gives the dessert a special touch, a festive look, but covers up what you don’t want others to see!     

playing Barbies with her great grand-daughters Christmas 1994

      My kitchen does not have fresh cookies in a tin in case folks drop in, nor do I have at any given time all the ingredients for a homemade cake. But I do have a stash of coconut and a container of raisins, and I know how to use them.

       And thanks to the writing of this today, I’ve googled coffee grounds and gosh, there’s so much I could be doing with those!

20200410 50 Raisins, Coconut, and Coffee Grounds

      

        

Ghostly Wafts

      

1956 Granny & Me

Being home during the coronavirus has got me going through some old stuff that has been sitting around. This week I opened a box from my Mom’s house and found a stash of letters and postcards my grandmother had saved! There was a letter from me from many years ago which caught my eye. In it, I mentioned that there was a cousin in Canada looking for family recipes so as to put a cookbook together. And I asked Granny if she had sent her recipe for burnt toast?

       Poor Granny! I guess I never stopped teasing her about the toast. One morning during my college years, when I was living with her, there was a really strong smell of burning toast. I ran from the bedroom to the kitchen to check it out. Of the thoughts going through my mind I worried maybe Granny had stepped out of the room – gone downstairs or out on the porch – and the bread was stuck in the toaster continuing to burn, needing my attention.  

     As I got to the doorway to the kitchen though, there was Granny with her back to me, in front of the garbage pail frantically scraping the black part off of the

toast! She was trying to make it look not burned and edible. And when she saw me, she looked embarrassed, like I had caught her trying to be sneaky! But she recovered quickly and insisted the bread was okay to eat! Of course, the smell lingered until well after breakfast was finished.

       One morning a few years ago I was at the lab. My office was in the direct opposite corner from the break-room. The smell of burnt toast wafted through the whole building. It took me right back to 277 Hastings! I walked briskly down the halls, knowing better, but a feeling of excitement was welling in me anyway! I walked into the break-room. But my grandmother was not there with her back to me scraping the black off of the toast. I looked around. She was not anywhere. I asked, “Where is my Grandmother? She was just here burning the toast!” I was half serious when I asked – that’s the power of olfactory memory. I was so close to her that morning. And this happens anytime I smell burnt toast. It’s just that the morning in the lab was the most vivid of the experiences!

       I guess Granny would not have been able to include burnt toast in the family cookbook after all. And it is not because it’s silly. And it is not because it’s something I should not have continued to tease her about forever. It is because no one could ever repeat the experience of Granny’s Burnt Toast.

Granny's B'day 1998 with Sarah & Amanda in St. Aug

 

20200409 49 Ghostly Wafts

Granny's B'Day

    

4 Generations - Christmas 1990

     Today, April 6, 2020 is my grandmother’s 117^th birthday! My mother’s mother, Granny lived all but four years of the twentieth century, and of course I so wish I had asked her more questions, written down more of her stories!

       In 1973, when my grandmother was turning 70, I was a college sophomore and living with her. One day the week before the milestone birthday, I was walking across the Sears parking lot between classes (the Sears parking ramp was the portal back then between the main campus and the health science building. I believe Canisius now owns both the ramp and old Sears building) when I ran into a friend. We stopped and chatted. He was a year ahead of me and lived in the dorms. The only time we usually ever saw each other was at the weekly TGIFs, and then our conversations were usually a beer-mingled hoot.

Mom and Granny 1978

       Well this day in the parking lot, as we talked, he happened to ask if I was going to the John Sebastian concert that the school was sponsoring a week from Saturday? Before it sank in to my thick skull that he was asking me out, I said, “No, I won’t be going to the concert because I’m hosting a 70^th birthday party for my grandmother that night. Just a small gathering with family and cake.” I don’t know how long I chattered on. The young man did not react like he had just been turned down for a date with what must have sounded like the lamest excuse ever. But then again, in all of our subsequent TGIF conversations, he never suggested maybe going out sometime ever again.

       When I finally realized I had missed out on a date with this guy because of Granny’s birthday, I chalked it up to fate, and I’ve enjoyed the irony ever since.

9 great grandchildren by 1997

       Life was much different but equally celebratory twelve years later. On Granny’s 82^nd birthday, a Saturday, her grandchildren all stopped by at the same time in the afternoon to visit. And a great-grandchild was there as well! Sarah was 9-months old. We plunked her down in the middle of the living room floor and we sat and stared while Sarah entertained us all! Fewer words were never spoken by us. And yet Granny was oh so tickled!

       Granny’s great-grandchildren eventually totaled 10, and today there are three great-great-grandchildren. They might never grasp to whom they owe so much of their great greatness. But her 117^th birthday is today!

20200406 48 Granny’s B’day

        

The Three P's

    

     

      
      Getting ready to tune into an online church service this morning. And I’m reminded of something from the days the girls and I went to church regularly during their growing up years.

       One Sunday, the minister said he had been working on the sermon earlier in the week. He had typed the word pastoring and suddenly spell check jumped up with a message, apparently pastoring was not recognized as a word. And spell check asked did he mean to type pasturing, or maybe he meant posturing!

       The minister was amused. Ministers might easily be construed as pastoring, pasturing, and posturing all at the same time.

       What a lovely set of three words to string together like that – and one could apply them to most public speakers, I suppose.
              Truth be told, however, our minister did not posture, I don’t think, but he has retired, so the pastor these days is indeed out to pasture – a well deserved and lovely pasture, I am sure!

20200405 47 The Three P’s

Dangers Evaporating

      

Who could ask for more?

Mount Pelee was mentioned in Sharp Stick in the Eye. It was in a paragraph I wrote about the tour I took of Martinique island ‘way back in 1980. Pelee is spelled incorrectly in Sharp Stick in the Eye, sigh, and technically, it is still not correct here because there should be an accent over the second e, and in the two minutes I’ve given myself today to learn how to put an accent over a letter in Word, yeah, it does not appear to be going to happen.

       Anyway, the story of Mount Pelee, a volcano on Martinique, has come to mind a few times during this our world’s coronavirus spring.

The version I was told that day on the tour was that back in 1902, there were signs that the usually quiet Pelee was going to erupt. But would it really erupt? Was there really an imminent danger to the city below? Or were folks overreacting when they spoke of evacuation?

       The mayor of the city was concerned because election day was upon them. He was being advised to have the townspeople leave, but then again, what a hassle that would make of the elections! What if the danger were not so imminent? What if everyone got mad at him for disrupting their lives, their jobs, forcing expenses as they moved out and moved back, especially if the volcano ended up not erupting? What a mess that would be.

But, what if evacuation could be delayed? Pelee had not erupted in any of their lifetimes, what were the chances it would blow soon? The mayor decided to wait until after elections.

Wrong choice.

       Mount Pelee blew! Its top went from solid to gas spewing onto the land below.

 The entire city burned, melted, evaporated. On the tour, seventy-eight years later, we stood on the very few bricks that remained. Of the rest of the bricks, the rest of the town there was nothing left!

       It was said that the only survivor of the city of nearly 30,000 people was a prisoner whose cell was mostly underground on the outskirts of the town. In Wikipedia today, there is mention of a girl who took a boat upstream to a cave and also survived. But no one else – not even the mayor.

       And of course, what is going on today reminds me of the story of Mount Pelee and the mayor. It is so hard for our present day governors and mayors to decide which course of action is best. Should everyone be quarantined, or should they be allowed to go about their daily lives or should some limited activity in between those two extremes be agreed upon? Is quarantine an overkill? Will no or limited quarantine indeed kill?

These decisions are difficult, and not because the governors and mayors are worried about reelection, (I, perhaps naively, would like to believe), but rather they are truly wanting to do what is best for all their constituents. And the choices are not pretty – enforce a quarantine and incur the wrath of those who believe the dangers aren’t that great and hold our officials responsible for our personal monetary losses, or take a chance and go without quarantine and be responsible for the many more deaths that might occur!

It is tough to know when the danger is really really real. And yet if we end up waiting a moment too long, a hundred years from now, people could be taking a tour of our hometowns, standing on a couple of bricks and being told that everything else had evaporated in an instant.

(prints from Library of Congress, I think it is okay to use them?)

20200404 46 Dangers Evaporating

      

Holding On

      

       It was two weeks ago today I thought I would go to the library to drop off some books and pick up a few juicy novels to help tide us over the coronavirus. At that point in time, people had already been social distancing somewhat, schools were out, many businesses had closed. But I myself had been doing my regular jaunts to the grocery store, the post office, a restaurant or two, and their parking lots all looked the way they always did. Life was not that different.

      

out the front of my Kenville apt

But two weeks ago today, when I got to the library, it was closed. The sign in the window said it would reopen April 5^th at the earliest. Even the crew that had been working in the parking lot for months on an environmental project connected with the library was absent – their big trucks were sitting there empty. It felt eerie. Two other cars were parked as two people walked toward the book return slot. And I think I might have just been imagining the tumbleweed rolling by.

       Well, a closed library should not have been too surprising. I decided to stop by a used bookstore for my juicy novel fix. The sign on its door said CLOSED with no mention of when it might reopen. Then I opted for the bookstore at the mall – I would get one or two novels maybe from its bargain table. Wow, the parking lot of the mall looked as deserted as the library! It was closed. The Twilight Zone theme music played in my head.

       I drove home. Later I told Mike a story about Buffalo. A story of how Buffalo once was when I lived there and how I imagine its people still to be.

       When there is a big, humongous snowstorm in Buffalo, when the roads become impassable and transportation is at a standstill, Buffalonians stay home.

       For a day.

       Maybe two.

       The storm is over, and the sun comes out. Buffalonians go out too. It might be days before any traffic can get moving again. But we go out.

       We may have to scale tall drifts of snow. We may hurt ourselves slipping and falling on the ice. We might go no further than the nearest convenience store for something we were convinced we absolutely had to have. Those who are more adventurous than I play in the drifts, dig and create in the snow, revel on the ice. We may freeze our appendages getting back home again. But we go out.

       One winter when I was living at the apartment on Kenville, there was a storm with several feet of snow. Businesses were closed, people were told to stay off the roads, and even the buses stopped running. We were home from the lab for one day. And the next day, I announced I was going to the store. It was bitter cold, but the blizzard had stopped its dumping, and the sun was shining. My plan was to walk, not to the convenience store, which was closer, but rather to the grocery store less than a mile away. My husband said good luck – he was staying in. He was not a native Buffalonian.

mild winter, bedroom window Kenville

       Of course, nothing as yet had been plowed or shoveled. I walked on top of the snow where I thought the sidewalk was. The route was cold, slow, and slippery.

       Before I got all the way past the apartment complex, a woman called out to me. She looked to be about my age and was all bundled up. It was so weird. I could not imagine why she wanted my attention. We did not know each other. She motioned for me to come over to her at her apartment door.

       And when I got close enough to understand the woman more clearly, she said that she needed to get groceries, but she did not want to go alone, and she was afraid of falling. Could we walk to the store together, and could she hold on to me the whole way?  

       What a sight we must have made – two crazy women in the snow, one with a firm grip on the heavy winter coat of the other, both chatting with chattering teeth as we made our way down the street!

       And now it has been two weeks since I thought about that day in the snow. Two weeks since I reflected fondly on Buffalonians who do not stay home when life comes to a seeming standstill. After a day or two they go out.

       But in those two weeks so much has happened. Closures and cancellations will continue through the whole month of April. We should not be on the roads. The grocery store parking lot no longer has its usual number of cars. The tumbleweeds are rolling through.

       I sit on the front porch in the afternoons when the sun is shining, with the unread novels I have found around the house. People walk, jog, stroller by and say hello, or wave, but of course, no one asks to hold on to me to walk to the store.

       And I’m hoping my fellow Buffalonians have figured it out too. No, it is not a blizzard. But it is something! Something much bigger. And this time, we need to stay home!

20200402 45 Holding On

        

Extinction

       There was a morning long ago when I was driving to work at the lab. The lab was still in Norcross, so it must have been between 1994 and ’98. And in the car, I would listen mostly to Fox 97 – the Oldies radio station. A station which is no more. The morning duo were Randy and Spiff who were usually good for a laugh or at least a smile on the drive in. Every Friday morning, they played the Scotsman’s Song, you know, the one about the kilt and the blue ribbon? And I think it was on Mondays it was they played the Man Song. The rest were all sixties songs with the dj’s lively banter mixed in. You could tell Randy and Spiff were having a good time.

       So, on this one particular morning, Randy and Spiff mentioned that a news item had just come in that they couldn’t wait to share. There were renovations going on at the stadium downtown. And in the midst of some digging there, bones had been found. The buzz was that these might be dinosaur bones!

       Wow! As I drove, I wondered about dinosaur bones in Atlanta, in Georgia. Have bones been found here before this? I had not lived in Georgia too many years but wouldn’t I have known by then about the local dinosaurs? Maybe these were the first ever dinosaur bones found in Georgia? Oh gosh this was exciting. I couldn’t wait to get to the lab and tell the others!

       Yes! Dinosaur bones were definitely newsworthy to my fellow science co-workers!

       Then, as the day wore on, tasks distracted us, and no more was heard on the radio or elsewhere about the find at the stadium.

       That seemed strange.

       And late in the afternoon, a co-worker came by and  said, “yeah, Denise, about the dinosaur bones? You do realize, don’t you, that today is April first?”

       Randy and Spiff had totally April fooled me! And now you know why this memory came upon me today.

       It was a great April Fool’s Day prank.

       But I still mourn the sudden extinction of the Atlanta dinosaur!

20200401 44 Extinction

Blue Plate Special

     

     So, there is a Mom connection to the stained glass in our house too. My mother, that is. When Mom lived in Florida, there was a thin window next to her front door. A friend commissioned an acquaintance to make this stained glass piece for her, completely filling in the window by the door adding charm along with privacy. In Georgia, the piece was hung in her living room/sun-room, and now it is with Mike and me and much enjoyed.

the window by the door stained glass

gift from Mom

       Mom knew I liked stained glass, and one year she gave me this for Christmas. I think she had spotted it in an antique store. We have not hung it back up since the rooms were painted, thinking we were going to put the house up for sale soon and avoiding putting fresh holes in the wall. This piece will have a treasured space wherever it is we retire to.

       And this next piece has a story that incorporates both my Mom and my sister-in-law, Michelle. Mom had a shelf on two walls of her dining room in both St. Augustine and in Buford. The shelves were plate racks with a ridge allowing plates to be displayed standing up and leaning against the wall. Mom had a collection of blue plates on these shelves – lovely. After Mom passed away, some, maybe all, of the plates were sent to Eric and Michelle.

      

Mom's blue plate, Michelle's stained glass

     Several months later, Michelle sent this to us – stained glass with one of the blue plates suspended in the middle. She sent one also to Amanda and yet a third one to Sarah! Looking at the plate and the glass, I feel Mom connecting us all. It takes more than talent to create such works of art – it takes Michelle’s great big heart!

20200401 43 Blue Plate Special