Aunt Evelyn

I met my Aunt Evelyn ( my father's sister) a few times when I was little, and through my father's telling me about her, and a few pictures, I got to know her ...

... and then we started writing back and forth a few times a year when I was 10 or so...  I continued to, with her telling me the good and bad things going on in her life, to share with everyone, until she got too sick and died, in her early 50's, of  the diabetes she'd delt with for years ...

I was the family liason because at that point, I was the only one with time to write often, and phone calls were expensive and left to one on Christmas or New Year's, usually.....................

I still remember the arrival of the Lei from Hawaii and the fresh dates from California that arrived during Christmas week when I was growing up. They were to the family. She was a stewardess for American Airlines. I never got gifts from her, only the photos and letters, personally... but when I got married, not long before she passed on,  she sent me a cut crystal salad bowl set that I treasured.

As terrible as it sounds to say it, I don't know what became of it in all the changes that have occurred in my adult life, but the memory of it means as much as the actual bowl did, and it's locked in my heart... safe and sound...................... and so is her smile

it was Christmas magic

Sometimes parents explain that they help Santa and how Santa is the Spirit of Christmas but there is a magic that this doesn't explain... like the year I just happened to pick up some really cute ornaments when we were shopping, and I didn't know why... and then some more candy canes.. I just had a feeling I should get them... and then drove around showing my sons the lights on people's houses. Suddenly I knew why I'd gotten them... We raced back home and they put on Santa hats and we prepared the ornaments and candy canes with a card. Then we went back to the best house and they went and knocked on the door. Unbeknownst to us, the parents were decorating the tree, and the little boy came to answer the door for the elves... and invited them in to see his tree. You can be sure that that was something they talked about every Christmas for a while... How Santa's Elves came to see them decorate the tree, and even gave them Ornaments to hang on it... because they had THE BEST LIGHTS AND THE HAPPIEST HOUSE OF ALL ... for real

I had thought that I would do most of my writing here in the winter months when I had more time, but apparently that's not so... I just got mellow, studied things ( input) and semi-hibernated...

SO...well, I guess Spring through Fall is my outgoing time, which is fitting, so I might not be on ehere much now either, but out gathering thoughts and experiences to share when it gets cool again.

Time just changed and already I can feel Spring calling me, like it did to old Moley in the Wind in the Willows... I feel it welling up within me, like the sap rising in a Sugar Maple...

I took a walk at Roosevelt Estate after work yesterday, taking my first steps into a new spance of growth and renewal... around the Wallace Center this time, for the first time... walking on the soggy grass, seeing how the deer had been there, and being greeted by a squirrel who came very near to me... being beckoned by the door in the wall to THE SECRET GARDEN...