generously serve

The air outside is as hot as an oven.
Time to make a fake cake.
Something I can stitch in the cool, dim living room.
Something using felt and thread instead of a mixing bowl and wooden spoon.
Maybe a little vanilla cake.
The kind dolls dine upon.
One that rises up out of the pan, triple tall.
A drizzle of chocolate glaze.
Some pink roses and it's time for tea.

P.S. The roses are resin and will have velcro on their backs.
The cake is almost six inches across and will generously serve a dozen dolls, two little girls and one gramma.

wooden garden

golden key

Having grandchildren is good for your marriage.
Not, as you might think, because you are united against a common foe, but because your patience becomes  a finely honed thing and the key, the golden key to any good marriage is patience.

much much closer

This is not the Von Trapp children posing in the Austrian alpine.

It's a picture taken high atop Mount Cook and includes my mom and dad perched on the edge of splendor.

Isn't the composition of this photo a rare and wondrous thing?

Aren't the teenagers framed just right?

Don't they look like some lifestyle photographer had a vision?

Doesn't my dad have a bad case of hat hair?

Maybe it's just because my mother is smiling warmly from the center of the photo's foreground that it occurs to me the photographer got the focal point just right.

And, I noticed something for the first time tonight.

My dad is holding my Mom's hand.

He hasn't turned to face the picture taker.

His thoughts are somewhere else.

Somewhere much, much closer.

birds come

We have a plum tree smack dab in the center of our front yard. It was a slender slip of a tree when we first planted it a decade ago but now has branches stout and aplenty. Birds come.
"Look," my husband says, pointing. A house sparrow twitters as it scrambles higher in the branches.
"Is that a Vireo," I ask incredulously as a slender olive-grey bird flutters on a low limb.
"A Tanager!" we gasp in unison.
And then, out of the top of the tree like a girl from a cake, pops a Robin.
A United Nations of birds.

can't live without

My four year old granddaughter began to cough one evening last week and by morning, was struggling to breathe.
She couldn't draw in a breath.
She couldn't even cry.
The Hospital Emergency Ward rolled out the red carpet.
She was ushered right in and given a bed and oxygen.
Breathing is one of those essentials.
You can't live without breath.
My little granddaughter had her own list of things she couldn't live without.

My daughter recorded her settling down to sleep with her phone;
A comforting picture for those at home.
They lay snuggled together on the hospital bed, mommy and little girl.
"I love you Mommy,' Little says sleepily.
"I love you too. Try to go to sleep now," urges my daughter.
"It's not dark enough," Little laments.
"And I can't live without all my toys and stuffies........and I can't live without......" Here she taps thoughtfully on her lower lip. "And I can't live without my lipstick." (AKA Chapstick)

to matter

A pair of old photos from my mothers childhood makes me smile and nod and ponder. I like to think of them as Exhibit A and B.
Exhibit A, above, shows my visiting great grandmother Minerva. It also shows my Aunt Fran, the toddler beaming on the left, and on the right, my mother. My very, very sad little mother.. Smack dab in the center is a cousin, the little interloper. She has traveled by train across the Rocky Mountains with Gramma Minerva. There is something recognizable in her pose. It's HER Gramma Minerva.  There is also something recognizable in my mother's pose, something so unusual that it stands out like a beacon.
My mother is Sad.

Exhibit B is very telling. The photographer, likely my own kind Gramma has sized up the situation. My Very Sad Mother has now been given the place of honor at Gramma Minerva's knee.
Baby Fran's smile has faded.
There is angst in the air.
Little Interloper has taken up her new position unimpaired and has a hand possessively and comfortably placed.
My mother's mood remains unaltered. Very Sad still has her in its grip. In fact, she may now have added Very Put Out.

Time has swirled by since that long ago afternoon.
Lots and lots of time.
My mother has always been known for the sweetness of her disposition and the steadfastness of her optimistic, friendly nature, for her remarkably ever ready smile.
But here, in black and white is the evidence.
She was once a little girl just like any other little girl.

The steady smile of Great Gramma Minerva, the comforting warm sun, a kindly photographer.... all come together in these pictures.
They prove the universal need we all have to feel important and special.
To matter.