Another Nudge From Beyond

Warren's new space

Earlier this month, in my post about Warren's mother, Ellen, I noted that she still makes "her presence known in our lives" in small ways.

Well, she's not the only one. 

I never met Warren's father, Arthur. I knew his solid reputation in town as an optometrist. I knew he'd created the masthead for the junior high newspaper, the Willis W.I.S.E., when his younger son, Brian, a year behind me, joined the staff (I was the editor-in-chief as an 8th grader). Only after Arthur's death did I learn of his involvement and commitment to this community through the Masons, the American Legion, and, way, way back, co-chairing Delaware's polio vaccination drive when the polio vaccine first came out. 

So I have a sense of who Arthur was, but only a sense.

Warren recently moved into new storage space for the business through the generosity of the owner of a former industrial site, Ranco. His new space is in the former administrative office building. One Saturday earlier this month, we went out to vacuum and shampoo the carpet, as well as dust out spiderwebs, to get it ready for him to start moving in lumber and other materials for his business, as well as some of his percussion equipment. I was at the window at the far end of the room, cleaning the windowsill. I stepped off the stepladder, turned towards the door, and saw for the first time the door from inside the room:

The back of the door in the new room

I called to Warren. He, too, had just seen the back of the door that morning.

"Your dad."

"Yes."

Like Ellen, Arthur also occasionally lets his presence be felt in small ways. This one blew me away.

Arthur Irvin Hyer would be 115 today. I am sorry I never met him; I appreciate him for what he gave this community and his family.

Happy birthday, Arthur!

Of Course She Did!

There is an open container in our basement that holds numerous menus from restaurants that Warren's parents visited over the years. Warren knows that many of them date from mid-century Chicago restaurants. I have never looked through them, but one was sticking up so prominently ("Look at me! Look at me!")  a few days ago that I pulled it out and glanced at it.

Oh my.

On September 30, 1978, Warren's mother Ellen took a one-day trip to New York City (from where and why Warren does not know). She traveled with a close friend, who Warren remembers as being blind. They ate lunch in the Peacock Room at the Waldorf Astoria and Ellen not only kept (of course she did!) but also annotated the menu as to the decor of the room and table setting (down to the color of the napkins) as well as what they ate (they each ordered the fresh fruit plate with cottage cheese, as well as cheesecake). 

Ellen then noted what their entire day's activities. Their morning was spent at "the Metropolitan" (I'm assuming she was referring to the Metropolitan Museum of Art). Their afternoon was spent shopping—at Bonwit Teller, Tiffany's, and Macy's—and included a carriage ride through Central Park.

And there was one final entry of note.

Ellen had a history of crossing paths with famous or well-known people. She once rode an elevator with Eleanor Roosevelt. She met Ronald Reagan in the lobby of a Dayton hotel, either in the late 1960s or early 1970s, not running for office, but, as Warren described it (who was there with her) "with an entourage." And, she knew Clayton Moore (the original "Lone Ranger") from her childhood on, as he was a relative, and posed for pictures with him years later in California.

So it was absolutely no surprise to me when I saw the final note on her memo:

"Saw Robert Redford!" 

Of course she did. If anyone was going to have a celebrity sighting on a one-day trip to New York City, it would have been Ellen. 

Ellen would be 105 years old today. She is still making her presence known in our lives through little things like this. 

Happy Birthday, dear Ellen! 

Inch Three: Past and Present

The past slipping in through the back door

Sometimes the past comes in through the front door, plopping on the couch and catching up on the local news.

And sometimes it slips in quietly through the back door, and you suddenly come face to face with it and exclaim, "Oh, there you are!"

The past few days have held each of those moments.

Through the front door? As of this morning, I am back on Metformin, a standard out-of-the-gate medicine for diabetes. Now, I have had diabetes since 2018, and was on Metformin from July 2018 to about 2020, when my A1C, the gold standard for tracking diabetes, had stayed at 6.6 for months and my then PCP took me off of it. Given my, frankly, more demanding medical issues—from the myeloma to the MDS to the hospitalizations in 2023 and 2025—the diabetes was not the most important player in my medical panoply. But now it is standing in the front row, demanding some attention. Given my age, my genetics, and the beating my pancreas took in 2023, neither I nor my doctor is surprised. And my PCP Melissa takes a good, no-nonsense approach to it all: "Let's get you on Metformin and see if we can bring that number (8.4) down." She is not making me do finger sticks and I loved her frank comment about that: "Why would I make you stick yourself twice a day? To what end other than bruised fingers?" Melissa knows that I walk several miles a week, and I noted I could be a little more diligent about my diet, which is decent but not strict. She nodded on that: "Just live your life, April."  I will have my labs repeated in three months and we will go from there.

As for the back door, the past entered the house through a letter from my dear friend Tani. Tani and I write several times a week to one another, with our letters crisscrossing in the mail regularly. Last evening, I opened the one that had just arrived and out slipped a photo. A very old photo. A photo of our oldest two children: Wolf, maybe 18 months old (I just wrote Tani asking her for Wolf's age) and my Ben, all of seven months old. July, 1986. 

Oh my. 

I stared at the photo, tears in my eyes, and put my hand to my heart.

Oh my.

My 70th birthday is fast approaching and Warren asked me this morning if I "wanted to do anything" for it. We famously are low-key celebrators, so no, I did not want a party or a big feast or presents. Warren has a rehearsal in Columbus the next morning for an Easter Sunday service, so I mentioned that will impact the day (more than likely picking up a trailer, then loading the timpani that evening). I will make my own birthday cake, probably the Depression-era cake I did in 2024, and that will be plenty. 

Besides, I already got my present: that piece of the past in Tani's letter. Those children are long grown. They are in the present, as am I. But that tug from the past?

Priceless. 

The Tale of Two Cakes

Yesterday was my 68th birthday. Warren and I tend to keep birthday celebrations low-key (although he is turning 70 next week and that might make for a bit more confetti than usual) and that was especially true this year because of professional commitments on his part. 

Low-key day that it was, there was cake. Several years ago, I figured out that the best way for me to have chocolate birthday cake (my personal favorite) was to make it myself. I love to bake, so that was never a hurdle.

Yesterday was no exception. The Non-Consumer Advocate, Katy Wolk-Stanley, recently posted about making a Depression-era cake. A chocolate cake. I recognized the recipe as one that also was called "Canadian War Cake" because it did not rely on scarce commodities such as butter. So in the spirit of the day and my mood, I had one ready for lunch!

After lunch

My life contains great friends, great neighbors, and great community. Our youngest neighbor, Margauxcat (her version of her name, which is Margaux), apparently wanted to make sure my birthday was well-noted. Mid-afternoon, I received a text from Maura (her mother) that "Margaux has a birthday surprise for you! It's rather precarious..." and we coordinated their dropping it off here. 

"Rather precarious." How great is that?

A few minutes later, Maura came across the front lawn bearing a small tray on which was indeed perched something "rather precarious." Margaux was dancing around close behind. They had made muffins and Margaux decided that I needed one with extra special attention. So she built a tower from two, cementing them with buttercream icing, which accounted for the "rather precarious."

The "rather precarious" treat from next door

But it didn't stop there. Margaux decorated the top tower with what I can only describe as a bejeweled pit filled with colorful sprinkles and golden coins:

The bejeweled pit! 

What a gift! What a birthday treat!

Warren and I shared the tower after dinner last night. I gave him the foundation and I took the top piece, scattering little gold and blue bits and pieces across my plate. It was an absolutely wonderful way to end the day, both in taste and in neighborly love. 

And I still have chocolate birthday cake left! 

Inch One Hundred Forty-Nine: Benjamin

My son Benjamin is thirty-one years old today. He came into the world early on a Monday morning, just past 5:00 a.m. I remember taking him into my arms and exclaiming, "Benjamin is here!"

Benjamin lit up my world that morning. He has never stopped.

Happy birthday, Benjamin.

Inch One Hundred Thirty-Three: Birthday

This girl turned four yesterday. Here she is from earlier this summer, when I was out in Portland visiting.

Grandpa Warren and I talked with Ramona very briefly last night: she was full of sushi and shouting, and very, very wound up at being FOUR.

I would be too.

Happy birthday, Ramona!

Inch One Hundred Twelve: Of Pies and Poetry

On the left is a standard 9" pan; on the right is one of my 6" pans

The Academy of American Poets long ago declared the month of April National Poetry Month. As I noted in my last post, I am posting a poem a day on my Facebook page in honor of the month.

On the 4th day of National Poetry Month, I posted one of my own. My 60th birthday, a milestone I never anticipated reaching, had been the day before. We don't make a big deal about birthdays in this household. Oh, don't get me wrong—they're nice enough, we don't ignore them—but we don't go hog wild over them either. Presents, if any, tend to be small and modest. Celebrations tend to be minimal.

This year was not out of line with the usual. We went over to the house of our good friends, Mel and Mark, for a birthday brunch that Mel and Warren had planned. It was great. The rest of the day was spent doing small things around the house. That was good too.

I did get a birthday present this year. Two days before my birthday, Warren and I were out of town on a business trip and spent some time walking around the city of Medina, which boasts a restored and revitalized downtown. The local hardware store is still in business and we popped in to explore. In the basement were home goods: cookware, bakeware, utensils. And right there in front of us were pie pans: little patty pans, standard size pans, and (be still my heart) 6" pans.

I have wanted 6" pans for the last few months, ever since the aforementioned friend Mark brought over two small pies, a pecan and a sweet potato, each baked in a 6" pan. I was so taken with the little pans that I ended up writing several poems about them. So when I saw the same size pan in the hardware store, my eyes lit up. Warren, seeing the look on my face, bought two of them for my birthday. The night before the brunch, I gave the pans a test run, baking two small apple pies. These accompanied us to brunch the next morning.

At brunch, I read one of my pie poems. Mark, who is my partner in the Death and Dying Poetry Club, and his wife listened with enthusiasm, despite having read the pie poems before. Warren, who unfortunately is poetry adverse, politely suffered through the reading without too much squirming. 

Here, in honor of National Poetry Month and pies everywhere, is my poem,  Pie amour fu (crazy pie love):

Pie amour fu

It was the small pie pans I marveled at

Not patty pans

More half grown than that.

They had belonged to your grandmother

Or your aunts perhaps

A whole lineage of piemakers.

I would ponder that later.

But their size!

I want to cradle them in my arms

Croon to them

Dance a pie dance with them turning round and round

Then tuck them into a little bed whispering “sweet dreams” and “sleep tight.”

I want to bake a thousand small pies

And pass them out to strangers on the street.

*****

Inch Six: Cake

Warren and I have birthdays eight days apart tin April. For the last several years, I have baked Warren a birthday cake from scratch, always the same recipe. The cake of the day is found in my battered 1990 Fannie Farmer Cookbook (13th edition), page 570. In Fannie Farmer, it is called "Lady Baltimore cake,"as its origins may have been in a tearoom of the same name in Charleston, South Carolina. A true Lady Baltimore cake has a center filling of chopped pecans, figs, and dates. I use the recipe only for the creamy white layers of cake it turns out.

When Warren's birthday rolled around earlier this month, I again turned to the Lady Baltimore recipe and soon had two eight inch pans in the oven. I joined them together with the Seven-Minute Frosting (a boiled frosting) found on page 602. Feeling particularly plush, I slathered the cake heavily, finishing off the top with a decorative swirl. Proud of my handiwork, I put a photo of it on Facebook.

A week before Warren's birthday, I had put a photo of a long-ago birthday of my own. (I have written about the scene before in this blog.) A Facebook friend saw the photo and commented: "Your family sure does like cake. Is that the same family recipe you just made for your hubby?"

I burst out laughing when I read that comment. Oh, no, no, no. To my knowledge, my mother has never baked a cake from scratch my entire lifetime. I'm not sure if she ever has during her entire lifetime, even though you would think somewhere growing up she might have tried one. A very young bride in the 1950s, Mom thoroughly embraced modern conveniences in the kitchen, especially boxed mixes of all kinds. Even the icing came out of a box. (You mixed the contents with hot water "until smooth.") She was very much in step with her friends, with many other housewives across the country, and with her era.

It is only in looking back that I finally realize why Mom was no help the year I took 4-H Cooking and had to bake a scratch cake for judging. That morning, I must have baked four or five cakes before one turned out decent enough to take. Mom stood by while I struggled but could offer no insight: this was totally alien territory to her.

I spent a good part of my youth, starting at a very, very early age, rejecting the paths my mother kept pointing out for me. She was a good seamstress and sewed many of my clothes. In contrast, I refused to learn and am still a poor sewer with severely limited skills. After her children were mostly grown, Mom did needlepoint and plastic canvas crafts. I didn't and don't. She wanted desperately for me to pierce my ears in 8th grade; to this day, I still do not have holes in my ears. If she was for it, I was against it, and vice versa.

So small wonder that when my interest in baking awoke, I baked with a vengeance. Lemon tarts, breads, pies, cookies, cakes—all from scratch, all step by step. Baking was something that came easily to me and that I could do without interference or competition from my mother. And to her credit, Mom has never suggested, even when asked, that she taught me anything about baking. Despite the wrangling we have done over the years, baking is one arena she ceded without protest.

One of the treasures in this house is the 1947 edition of The Boston Cooking-School Cookbook, the forerunner to the Fannie Farmer Cookbook. It was a wedding gift to Warren's parents when they married in 1948. Ellen often made notations in the margin of this cookbook as to the strength and weakness of a recipe. The recipe for what is now the Lady Baltimore cake is called "white or snow cake" in the 1947 volume. There is no marginalia on this recipe and I suspect Ellen never tried this particular recipe, although her notes indicate she tried plenty of other scratch cake recipes.

Ellen died ten years ago on Warren's birthday. She never got to see us as a couple and she and I never had the pleasure of baking together. She would have been very happy with our marriage. And I like to think she would have enjoyed being around when I baked, especially for Warren's birthday. I see her at the table, both Ellen and I holding our breaths as I cut into the cake and serve up the first slice for the birthday boy.

This Other Time, This Other Self

Cindy and April, 1968

First Glimpse

My lifelong friend Cindy recently asked me if I had any photos of us together as children.

There aren't many that I know of and I made copies of the ones I had. When I gave them to her, I said, "I know there is one of us sharing a chair, but I can't find it."

And then in the manner of lost things, it turned up when I was looking for something else. "LOOK WHAT I FOUND!," my email read.

We are sitting in the kitchen of the house I grew up in, the top floor of a two-story house my maternal grandfather had built by himself in the early nineteen-teens. I say "house," but it was really a homemade apartment building: three units (one upstairs, one downstairs, and one split—we lived in the split unit) when I was a young child, two units (one upstairs, our" house, one downstairs, where my grandparents and aunt lived) when I was older. Because it was all family (even the third set of tenants had a family tie), we had the run of the whole house, which made it seem less like an apartment building. It was certainly an atypical style of housing for our small town, even with family on both floors.

It is clearly a birthday celebration of some sort, noting the stack of plates and forks on the table. It is probably my birthday, as I would have wanted a chocolate cake, not the vanilla cake someone (most likely my mom) is ready to slice.

In looking at my childhood, I can see now that my parents back then would have struggling up the socioeconomic ladder from working class poor to blue collar middle class. Home ownership was still a few years away for them, and when they did buy, it was a ramshackle fixer-upper that they worked on night and day for three months before we could move in. The apartment, indeed the whole house, lacked central heating; the only full bathroom was on the first floor. We had a toilet in a closet-sized room upstairs. Dad shaved at the kitchen sink; my mom and I were adept at washing our hair under the sink faucet. None of that struck me as strange then, and does not strike me as strange now looking back.

When I found the photo for Cindy, I looked at it long and hard. I want to enter and explore that kitchen again, a kitchen I last ate supper in in early 1970. I want to walk again in that long ago, long lost space, put my hand there, see it with the eyes of an adult far older now than my parents were then. I want to see how they cobbled together, with pennies and string and aspirations, the family life they gave us all.

Second Glimpse

My bookshelf, 2013 

My intense reading rampage continues. I have at any given time several titles in the queue at the library. Sometimes they are new books and I am on the wait list, sometimes they are arriving from other libraries.

The other day, returning two and knowing no queued books were waiting for me, I took a look at the New Nonfiction shelf. I grabbed one called Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America One Step At a Time. The book was a romp through the dynamics of downtown revitalization and urban planning. "Streetscape," "street fabric," "scale," "edge," and other planning terms were served up in a breezy, sometimes snarky tone. It was a lingo and a world (and an attitude) I used to know well and this book dropped me back into that world temporarily.

A decade ago I was in the thick of those ideas and discussions here in Delaware. I lived in a rehabbed downtown apartment, I sat on our city's Historic Preservation Commission (Delaware has a historic overlay downtown), I spent a lot of time reading, talking, and writing about downtown development. My bookshelves are still laden with works on planning, urban design, and architecture. There is Jane Jacobs, there is Witold Rybczynski, there is the ferociously irreverent James Howard Kuntsler. I have A Field Guide to Sprawl and A Visual Dictionary of Architecture.

There was a night, after a design hearing of some sort, when lots of downtown-oriented friends gathered in my apartment for an impromptu debriefing and celebration. While I did not share a chair with anyone that night, there was that same giddiness. I remember having my feet on the rungs of someone else's chair, the heightened discussion, a lot of laughter, and the rush of knowing all of us in the room shared a common goal.

I left that world behind starting in 2004. First the local newspaper sold and I stopped writing my architectural column. Then the myeloma appeared and my life narrowed into a tunnel of treatment When I reemerged, time had moved on and so had I. Marriage to Warren moved me even further into the Symphony world and Percussion Universe. I can still talk "urban development," but I am no longer fluent and my knowledge is no longer current.

I am no more the 40-something who celebrated that hearing victory than I am the twelve-year old who celebrated that birthday alongside her best friend. Yet flecks of them both are threaded through the person I am today, glimmering on the surface when something stirs those other times, those other selves.

Happy Birthday, Beverly Cleary!

Childhood Memory #7: The Library

Walking to the books -
How many miles did I log
going back and forth?

**********

One of Louis Darling's wonderful drawings; this one from Beezus and Ramona

I thought I was done posting haiku during this poetry challenge, but then I discovered that author Beverly Cleary is 95 today!

As a child, I lived a little less than half a mile from the library, which was then at the north edge of downtown, right next to the courthouse. The library loomed large in my childhood: it was my safe haven, it was my gateway to the world, it was one of a very few places where I felt cherished, safe, and totally free to be myself. I was a weekly visitor at any time of the year. During the summer, it was not unusual for me to make three or four trips a week to the library, sometimes two in the same day, usually on foot.

I may have been nine when I first discovered Beverly Cleary. Whether I found her on my own or whether Mrs. Judd, the archetypal librarian of my childhood, steered me Cleary's way, I cannot recall, but I do remember the first Cleary book I ever read. It was Ellen Tebbits, the story of a third grader who found her best friend in a janitorial closet where they were both hiding while they changed in and out of their dance clothes. (Read the book if you want to know why Ellen and Austine, her friend, were hiding.)

One book by Cleary and I was hooked. Otis Spofford (the wonderful bullfight chapter!), Beezus and Ramona (the applesauce!), and all the rest then available soon followed. Cleary's early works were illustrated by Louis Darling, whose detailed pen and ink drawings fascinated me almost as much as Cleary's words did. 

I missed out (the first time) on the rash of Ramona books Cleary wrote in the late 70s and early 80s. As luck would have it, after we moved back to Delaware, the girl next door one day brought over a sack of books she had "outgrown" and thought my boys might like to read. I was thrilled beyond words to find the bag was full of Beverly Cleary novels (including my beloved Ellen Tebbits), and thus I had the glorious opportunity to catch up on many of Cleary's later works that I had missed the first time around. I still have the twelve volumes we got that day and still dip into them frequently. I can never thank Bethany, then the girl next door and now a cherished friend, enough for that grocery sack of wonder.

In the 1990s, Cleary wrote two autobiographies, A Girl From Yamhill and On My Own Two Feet. These portray her childhood and adulthood up through the publication of Henry Huggins, her first book. Cleary wrote with clarity and honesty about her struggles to get an education and lead her own life despite constrained finances and the constant disapproval and opposition of her mother, themes which resonated deeply with me. They are as easy to read as her novels and I have returned to them more than once as well.

There is a wonderful line in the movie Hook (a favorite of mine), in which Captain Hook (the Captain Hook of Peter Pan fame) proclaims "What would the world be without Captain Hook?"

What would be it be indeed? That line rings true for all of the great characters of children's literature. What would the world be without Jo, Stuart, Charlotte, Laura, Harry, Dorothy, Jane, Pauline, Petrova, and Posie, Alice, Meg and Charles Wallace, Sara, Sam, Milo and Tock, Stanley, and Caddie? (Can you name the characters and the books?)

What would the world be without Beezus and Ramona?

Happy birthday, Beverly Cleary!

Time

Just a couple of weeks ago, the sun was rising to the south of the Victorian mansion due east of us across our backyard. I noticed this morning that the sun has moved a few notches further north and is now rising just on the south edge of the house, reminding me again of the infinite motion of the universe.

We had another vivid reminder today of the swift passage of time. Warren's son, David, turns 21 tomorrow, and we were addressing birthday cards to put in today's mail.

Warren was at a loss. "I don't know what to write," he said.

I looked at him, only to see unshed tears in his eyes. "I  don't know what to say. I haven't seen a lot of him in the last several years…and I just don't know."

We were both quiet for a moment. Then Warren blinked hard and finished signing the cards.

After I mailed them this morning, I found my thoughts turning to David, my stepson of now two plus years. I still find it improbable that I have a stepson at all, let alone the one I am blessed to have. And now he is turning 21.

Time flies. Time races.

I have known David for much of his life; I've seen him grow up. When he was a middle school student and I was still practicing law, he interviewed me as part of the requirements for a Boy Scout merit badge. I turned the tables and interviewed him when he finished his questions. David gamely went along with it, but I can only imagine he left that interview thinking "man, was that weird."

When Warren began divorce proceedings, David was a junior in high school. Because of the machinations of his then spouse and the gross neglect of the magistrate (long since removed from her position), he barely saw his children during the two years of proceedings. He missed almost all of the events that made up David's final high school months, including his becoming an Eagle Scout. There was a long, painful interlude where Warren had no children.

David was on the verge of leaving for college by the time the divorce was final, and now the emotional distance was joined by a geographical one. It was a time of a new start for him, a time of picking up pieces and starting all over again for his father.

For a long time, David flitted in and out of our lives on an erratic and intermittent basis. He would be funny and sarcastic and bombastic. He loved making provocative, in-your-face statements about his world views. "All mankind is evil and should be bombed!" When he talked, I imagined his words scrolling by in boldface 48 point type with exclamation points used liberally.

We would see him for five minutes here, an hour there, and then he would blow back out the door and out of our lives again. Warren would sigh and reflect that he hardly knew his son, hardly knew what to say to him.

But time moves swiftly and brings changes to us all.

In recent months, David has been stopping by more frequently and staying longer. He is still funny and sarcastic. But he is less swift to voice an outrageous opinion just for the sake of causing a stir. He will sit for long periods talking seriously about his studies, about his life, about topics of mutual interest with his father. When they made Hyer peanut brittle this Christmas, it was a joy to watch them work together in concert, each knowing the other's rhythms.

The teen has turned into a young adult, and the young adult is turning into a man.

A week ago tonight, David came by the Symphony office where we were participating in the downtown First Friday events. I was busy talking with those stopping in, so did not join David and Warren as they visited. When he left, David - my husband's son, my stepson - gave me a long, sweet hug.

My marriage has been a long string of gifts, starting with Warren. Two of those blessings have been his children. Under the circumstances, I didn't know whether they would accept me in their dad's life, let alone let me enter theirs. 

I am blessed beyond measure on all counts.

I have a stepson, David, who is 21 tomorrow. Happiest of birthday wishes, David.

Loving Shakespeare

Poor William Shakespeare.

So many folks automatically make a face when they hear his name. I used to work with a woman who would wrinkle her nose and announce loudly, "I hate Shakespeare," the moment she heard me refer to him. Never mind that she hadn't read anything by him since leaving high school many years earlier. She hated him and that was all there was to it.

Me? I love the guy. He was funny, he was brilliant, he was amazing. He had a vocabulary of over 60,000 words. Most of us - then and now - do well to have 20,000 words (and we all use far less in our everyday lives).

This guy loved words. He breathed words. He ate words three times a day and for his bedtime snack as well. I bet he moved in a constant cloud of words - in his head, on his tongue, in his heart.

And the phases and words he gave us! Chances are with so many of them that Shakespeare said it first. What the dickens! The game is up! For goodness sake! Vanished into thin air! Tongue-tied! Fair play! Seen better days! In a pickle!

It's Greek to me (yes, his words) why Shakespeare has such a bad rap.

In defense of Shakespeare, it's not his fault. He has often been badly taught by too many poorly prepared teachers. Not understanding the Bard themselves, they pass their own confusion and disdain on to their students, who, like my former coworker, end up hating Shakespeare. I still remember the "Meet the Teacher" night several years ago when Sam's literature teacher for the year brandished with great glee a CliffNotes edition of Julius Caesar, reassuring us that it would make Shakespeare "so much easier" (apparently for her).

A pox on both her houses! I wanted to send her packing.

As luck would have it, I had good fortune in abundance when it came to Shakespeare. Before I ever started high school, I had a summer camp cabin mate, a year older and infinitely wiser in the ways of high school literature, advise me that the way to "get" Shakespeare was to read him out loud for the rhythm and feel of his dialogue. She was right. Second, I went through high school during a magical era that, looking back, I can only call the Golden Age of English at Hayes. Kay Hearn, Steve Tobias, Arlene Gregory, Roberta Rollins - these were my guides to Shakespeare (and others). Shakespeare wrote plays that spanned the breadth of the human experience and I am forever indebted to those teachers for helping me glimpse the depth and reach of his writings.

There was no such as thing as too much of a good thing when it came to Shakespeare, as far as I was (and still am) concerned.

Part of the reason Shakespeare sets our teeth on edge is our own fault. We forget to put him in the right context. We pigeonhole his plays into tiny, airless slots of formality. He suffers from an overabundance of High Culture.

Put yourself in Elizabethan England. Performances were held at the Globe, an open air theatre. They were held during the day because there was no night lighting. If you had money, you sat in the galleries to watch. If you had a lot of money, you sat right on stage. If you were one of the masses, as most playgoers were, a penny bought you the right to stand on the ground at stage level. There were no elaborate sets, few costumes. There was no acoustical engineering, let alone mics, amps, and sound systems. Lines were shouted. The pace was fast - the actors had to hold the audience's attention as well as move the play along so it would be done before darkness descended.

So you had this sea of humanity (plays were well-attended in Elizabethan London), many of them mere feet away from actors strutting and fretting their hour upon the stage, members of the audience calling out comments and adding to the dialogue, and everyone - everyone! - talking about the play as it finished and the audience exited in waves. Shakespeare was the talk of the town as well as the toast of the town.

And what did we do to poor Will Shakespeare? We slowed him down. We put him in a suit and tie, or at least a velvet doublet. We made him sit up straight and comb his hair. No wonder so many bid him good riddance once they finish high school lit classes.

Far too many are hoodwinked into thinking of Shakespeare as this creaky ancient incomprehensible dead dude that has absolutely nothing to say to us in our modern world, when in fact he has everything to say.

Several years ago, a group known as Shakespeare Express performed "The Taming of the Shrew" at our local college. The troupe was known for its fast-paced, minimalist but accurate performances of Shakespeare's works. They performed in Gray Chapel, where our Symphony plays. Gray Chapel was the perfect venue, because the seating begins right at the stage's edge, not unlike the Globe in Shakespeare's time. Some audience members were seated on the stage. The actors played without sound equipment and with the simplest of stage props. They performed at breakneck pace and they were superb. I had two seventh grade boys with me that night - an age and gender notoriously considered "Shakespeare inappropriate" - and they were both blown away by a work written some 400 years earlier.

I wish more young people met Shakespeare that way, instead of through (shudder) CliffNotes hawked by the teacher. It is high time we had a Shakespeare immersion program in this country. I can imagine troupes of actors barnstorming from town to town bringing Shakespeare - the real Shakespeare, the plays as he meant them to be performed - to all of us.

I like to think of Will Shakespeare in our era. I bet he would be on Facebook. For sure he would love YouTube. A blogger? Maybe not. After all, the play's the thing.

Shakespeare's birthday is traditionally celebrated April 23rd, and this year marks his 446th one. I'd love to have a cake with that many candles on it for him. I'll settle for a cupcake.

And that's the long and the short of it (yep, you got it - he said it).

Happy Birthday, Mrs. Konigsburg!

I was working yesterday on a post called "Penny Dreams, Quarter Wishes," a topic I have been kicking around in my head since early January. Part of that title comes from a scene in a juvenile novel, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, by E. L. Konigsburg.

The novel take place almost entirely in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in which Claudia and Jamie, a sister and brother, are hiding after running away from their suburban home. They are bathing in the Museum's restaurant fountain one night when they discover that there are coins on the bottom of the fountain pool:

The bumps were pennies and nickels people had pitched into the fountain to make a wish. At least four people had thrown in dimes and one had tossed in a quarter.
"Someone very rich must have tossed in this quarter," Jamie whispered.
"Someone very poor," Claudia corrected. "Rich people have only penny wishes."

As I reread the above passage, I remembered that From the Mixed-Up Files, which was the 1968 Newberry Award winning book, was only Konigsburg's second novel and that her first had also garnered considerable attention. A little online research confirmed that Konigsburg not only won the Newberry Medal for From the Mixed-Up Files, but also won a Newberry Honor the same year for her first novel. She is the only author to win both the Newberry Medal and a Newberry Honor in the same year.

In the course of my Googling, I learned that today, February 10, is E. L . Konigsburg's birthday.

How could I not write about that?

29 years after her first Newberry Award, Konigsburg won a second for The View from Saturday. View is about four young students, "the Souls," who are chosen by their paraplegic teacher to be a middle school Academic Bowl team. All of them, students and teacher alike, learn about friendship and overcoming challenges in the course of a championship season. The book contains one of my (many) favorite passages in literature wherein the students, who come together for high tea every Saturday, share what day they would like to live over. Ethan recounts:

The Souls listened and were not embarrassed to hear, and I was not embarrassed to say, "I would like to live over the day of our first tea party. And, look," I added, "every Saturday since, I get to do just that."

Learning to read was a life changing event for me, as I imagine it is for many. I still remember the moment, several pages into the first grade reader, when I made the instantaneous and permanent connection between the print on the page and the words we speak. It was a lightning strike, a "Miracle Worker" moment, and it unleashed in me a passion for reading and books that has never been quenched.

By the time I was in second grade, I not only wanted to read books, but I also wanted to write them. I wanted to be a part of the magic of getting the ideas in my head on paper and in between two covers so that I could hold them in my hands. I wasn't that sure, back in 1963, whether girls could even be writers, but eventually I had the answer I sought.

With the guidance of Mrs. Judd, who presided over the children's section of the library in those days, I discovered a whole universe of women who wrote for young readers. Louisa May Alcott, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Beverly Cleary, Carol Ryrie Brink, Sydney Taylor, Rumer Godden, Eleanor Estes, Noel Streatfeild, Maud Hart Lovelace, E. L. Konigsburg, Lenora Mattingly Weber, Mary Stolz. (Somehow I missed out on Madeleine L'Engle until I began reading her works to my son Ben, but had I stumbled across her in my youth, she too would have entered my pantheon of favorites.) In looking back, I suspect Mrs. Judd deliberately guided me towards the women writers, somehow intuiting that I needed to know that women could write too.

Learning that women could be authors opened a door to the future for me. That realization - and their wonderful, incredible books - opened me to other possibilities for my life. In my family, the only career path was that of wife and mother. But now I knew something more: I could be a writer when I grew up.

E. L Konigsburg is 80 today. 80! When she was in her forties and writing From the Mixed-Up Files, she had Mrs. Frankweiler tell Claudia, "When one is eighty-two, one doesn't have to learn one new thing every day, and one knows that some things are impossible." By the time Konigsburg was in her seventies and wrote The View from Saturday, she populated several chapters with lively seniors undertaking new activities, celebrating a late life marriage, and wearing turquoise jogging suits. Apparently Konigsburg found the view from her seventies to be different from the view from her forties.

Birthdays are a time for gifts, and in this case, the gifts are all from the Birthday Girl. Thank you for your gifts to us: for Claudia and Jamie, for the Souls, for your willingness to spin tales time and time again for us to read over and over. Thank you, you and your other women colleagues in literature, for opening a door for me so many years ago.

Happy birthday, Mrs. Konigsburg!

Ben's Birthday

My son Ben is (gulp) 24 years old today.

24? How did he get to be 24? Wasn't he just 16 last week? Or 7?

Didn't I bring him home from the hospital just the other day?

A kaleidoscope of images dance in my head. Ben laughing the first time, learning to walk, learning to swim, learning to read, starting school, discovering music. Destination Imagination, marching band, In the Know. Books everywhere. I remember his coming back from a weekend visit to Reed and announcing he had found the college he wanted to attend; I remember him joyfully showing me the email announcement when he was accepted.

Ben headed to college in 2004 and, after the summer of 2005, never returned to my home again except as a visitor. He set up his own apartment and life elsewhere. He's been way far away all of that time. Until a few weeks ago, he lived in Portland, Oregon. He and Alise, my almost daughter-in-law, recently moved to Helena, Montana (her hometown), which brought him 700 miles closer to my front door, but it's still a long ways from here to there.

When Ben arrived at college, he was instantly home in ways he could not be elsewhere. He found acceptance and friendship and respect and Alise, all at the same place. From afar, I got to watch him assemble his life with the concentration he once brought to his building blocks. And while all the blocks aren't in place yet, I stand back and look at his life with the same amazement that I had when he was four.

The bond that Ben and I have shared from his birth forward is books. I read to Ben before he was two days old. His first night home from the hospital, I propped him in my arms, opened Are You My Mother, and began.

"A mother bird sat on her egg."

Every night of that first year - through colic, through croup, through teething - I read. Almost every night after that for the next 14 years, I read. I loved books and this child of mine also loved books. Once he learned to read, Ben took off on his own literary adventures, but we continued to share an hour at bedtime most nights, my reading aloud to him or sometimes the two of us taking turns. Then someone interfered and demanded that it stop. That broke off our time together reading, but it never broke that bond.

Books and more books. When Ben was in 4th grade, he had two desks, side by side. One was for him, the other was for his books. When he went off to college, he had to leave his books behind, but quickly began acquiring more books. When Warren and I moved into this house, I boxed up Ben's books and put them in the attic. There are nine or ten boxes up there. Maybe more. (And I didn't even box the children's books.) After Ben and Alise moved to Montana, Alise emailed me about the move being seamless, "only a little stressful trying to fit all of our beloved books into the small space in the car." I can only imagine.

I don't know what the future holds for Ben. I am quite sure it will continue to hold books. Like Thomas Jefferson, Ben cannot live without them. I hope and trust it will continue to hold Alise - funny, bright, engaging, loving, caring, theatrical, passionate, book-devouring Alise, who has brought joy and light to Ben's life.

Whatever it holds for you, Ben, know that I am there too, championing you.

I look back at all the books that flowed through our hands, from Redwall to Mordor, from dinosaurs to Feynman, from Seuss to Sutcliff. Whether we were down the rabbit hole with Alice or on the road with Stuart Little, Ben and I journeyed together, sharing a love of the story, a love of the books, a love of one another.

Happy 24th, Ben.

The Book Bunch

Tomorrow is my son Ben's birthday and I am finishing the post for his birthday. It is also the birthday of my friends Ada, Margo, and Scott.

These four birthday celebrants are among the most avid readers I know. I have some other friends who are also Big Readers, but these four take the cake. All but Ben live here in Delaware and the two most common sentences I exchange with them are "so what are you reading?" and "have you read [fill in the blank]?"

Is that merely coincidence?

There is a Talmudic passage that states that every unborn baby has a lit candle by its head so that it can see both into the past and into the future. The unborn baby is all-knowing. At birth, an angel taps it on the lips and the baby forgets everything it learned in the womb, so that it may enter the world in innocence and purity.

When I look at the December 16th bunch, I wonder whether that same angel nonetheless gave them each a little nudge and whispered "try reading."

Happy birthday, my bookish friends!

Aunt Ginger

Aunt Ginger is our family's Depression baby. She was born 80 years ago today, just 11 days before the stock market and the American economy crashed resoundingly into the Great Depression. My mom would come along six years later, which makes her a Depression-era baby as well, but Ginger gets the honors for being born in October of that infamous year.

Ginger is the aunt who in the old days would have been called the "old maid aunt." Ginger lived with her parents and never left home until after both were dead and it was time to move on. She never married, although she has enjoyed a rich and colorful romantic life. She never had children, unless you count the 28 or 30 (I can't remember which) nieces and nephews, of which I am one, as well as the countless great-nieces and great-nephews, who populated her life from her teen years on.

She has lived at only two addresses her whole life: the house my grandfather built over on the east side of town and in which she was born, and the apartment complex she moved into when she was 49 years old. Just recently, several of us spent a weekend moving her from the upstairs apartment she had lived in since 1978 to a downstairs apartment so she didn't have to climb stairs anymore.

Ginger was the family babysitter. Many of those nieces and nephews grew up right here in Delaware. She babysat most of us and, in more than one case, she babysat our children when they came along. My boys were often the recipients of Aunt Ginger's babysitting. During those years, she lived a little over two blocks away from our house. When Aunt Ginger was slated to babysit, my boys would stand on the sidewalk looking down the street, waiting to catch a glimpse of her. Whether it was one or two of them out there, the reaction was always the same: a whoop, a shout of "Ginger's coming!," and an impromptu little jig right there on the sidewalk.

Ginger never learned to drive. She tried to learn at least two different times in her life, but Ginger and a seat behind the steering wheel were a bad match from the outset. My mother has long told the story of driving with Ginger in the passenger seat, back when my mom was a newly minted driver, and coming to a railroad crossing. Mom started across after looking carefully right and left. Ginger also looked right and left, spied a locomotive headlight way, way, way, way down the tracks, and screamed "TRAIN! A TRAIN!" My mom promptly panicked and stalled the car out in the middle of the tracks. As mom tells the story, she had a tough time concentrating on starting the car and getting off the tracks with Ginger shrieking nonstop next to her.

Now imagine Ginger behind the wheel of a car and you will understand why she never learned to drive. From the limited tales I have heard, it was in large part because now when she shrieked ("A CAR! LOOK OUT FOR THAT BIKE! THERE'S A SQUIRREL!"), she was shrieking at herself and the whole enterprise was too fraught with tension to continue.

During her working years, Ginger relied on co-workers to get to the factory job she held for over 40 years - the only job she ever held. She rode to church with my parents until they started attending different congregations, then found rides with fellow church-goers. She and my mom go grocery shopping without fail every Friday, so that takes care of getting groceries from store to home. (When I was a kid, my brother and I would meet her at Albers and lug her groceries home in a wagon.)

Otherwise, even now, Ginger walks just about everywhere, weather permitting. As a result, despite chronic and severe asthma, Ginger has probably enjoyed the best health of all of her sisters and brothers. Still does, in fact. She will be the first to tell you that she is slower than she used to be, but then she will smile and say "but at least I'm still walking,"

Despite her lack of driving skills, Ginger is a well-seasoned traveler. She was the one who took us on a Greyhound bus to downtown Columbus annually to see the Lazarus Christmas windows and then shop in the flagship store. She traveled regularly to Florida for winter vacations, she visited Mexico with my cousin Anne, she flew out to see me in Portland when I was in the northwest and then later in California, when Ben was little. I have a photo of the two of them asleep in the back seat of the car after a long day in the Sierra foothills, his little boy head with its dark hair nestled close to her great-aunt head with its silver hair. She even flew to Europe when my brothers were stationed at various army bases in what was then West Germany.

In recent years, Ginger has started volunteering with our local Meals on Wheels. Hazel drives; Ginger delivers. She loves it. I think she gets a kick out of volunteering to serve "the elderly," being one of that group herself.

Not bad for an old maid aunt who never learned to drive.

Ginger has taken a good deal of ribbing over the years and not only for her lack of driving skills. She was almost always the straight man in a family full of wisecrackers. "Miss Priss" was one of many monikers she collected over the years. Like her namesake spice, her tongue and temper are sometimes sharp, which usually only served to spur on the teasing even more.

Some of those wisecrackers will be here later today. Unbeknownst to Ginger, there is a party this afternoon at this house. Ginger's only surviving sibling, my mother, will be there, of course. So will a cousin who I have yet to meet (cousins in the family at that generational level were a rare commodity). So will a number of Ginger's nieces and nephews, my siblings and cousins, most from around here but some coming from several states over to celebrate her 80th.

It will be a Skatzes gathering, which means it will be noisy and crowded and full of jokes. We planned a potluck; Jackie and Mark are bringing the cake, I'm making the chili. I still haven't figured out how to get Ginger from her apartment a block away to here without giving away the whole surprise, but I'm working on it.

I don't know how my cousins and brothers view Ginger, but she has been special in my life. When I was a little girl, we all lived in separate apartments in the Flax Street house, and I would often escape to Ginger's rooms. There I would rifle through her jewelry, listen to her LPs, and tolerate her putting polish on my nails (which I would then methodically scrape off). There was a bond between the two of us, maybe because I could always talk to her when I couldn't talk to my own mother. I still can. And hope to for years to come.

Happy 80th, Ginger!

Sam Has a Birthday This Weekend

I wrote about my son Sam when he moved to Oregon in early April. Sam is still out there, looking for work, living in a house with four other young adults, including his brother Ben. He turns 19 at the end of this month. This will be the first time ever that I have not spent at least a portion of his birthday with him, so this post is in lieu of baking Sam a birthday cake.

Sam has made for some great parenting moments over the years. There was the time when Sam was young - five, perhaps, maybe six - and he and Keegan, a year younger, decided it would be a good idea to throw rocks at Mrs. Roof's storm door. Mrs. Roof, who lived down the alley, was elderly and largely housebound. They tossed rocks until they broke the glass, then fled to their respective homes. I was not home when Mrs. Roof called to complain, but the story related by Sam's father was that when asked if he knew anything about Mrs. Roof's door, Sam denied any knowledge, then suddenly shouted, "I did it! I didn't know what I was doing! I'm crazy! I'm insane!"

Then there was the time that we took a lengthy car vacation from Ohio to California and back again, visiting a number of national parks along the way. The last stop, before barreling back to Ohio, was the Grand Canyon. Sam, who was eight that summer, marched up to the rim, looked at the spectacular vista spread out before him, then promptly turned around and sat down with his back to it. When I asked him why, Sam looked up - angry, homesick, on the verge of tears - and shouted "All you've done on this vacation is show me rocks!"

He refused to look at the Grand Canyon again.

There have been other moments as well: watching him tune his cello by harmonics when he was only six, because he could hear the tones so well, and then watching him put the cello down and refuse to play it ever again at age 11 rather than bend for the strings teacher who would not bend for him. There was the eighth grade science fair where he pulled off a Superior solely on the strength of his knowledge and ability to talk through the topic, having extrapolated data based on only one experiment. There was the one and only prom he attended, as the sophomore date of an older girlfriend, for which he groused and grumbled his way into a tux, posed for the mandatory pictures, then came home hours later exclaiming "That was a blast!"

My friend Katrina recently wrote me: "How is it that when you write, you make even problems with your kids sound poetic?"

How indeed? Probably because I exercise poetic license and exorcise the worst moments. There have been many; Sam and I have had more than our share of just plain awful scenes.

I am fortunate in that I was given a gift by Sam that changed the course of our relationship and kept it from unraveling entirely. Sam at sixteen was in court-ordered counseling; I participated in a family group independent of Sam. Sam's counselors decided he would benefit from a joint session. At it, one counselor asked Sam which parent he thought he was most like? Without missing a beat, Sam said "my mom." The counselor who had worked separately with both of us immediately said "I agree."

I had been sitting there expecting to hear "my dad," as every battle I struggled through with Sam reminded me of his father, who I had divorced after many long and difficult years together. Every time Sam and I crossed swords, I would see his father in him and my defenses would go up.

And here was Sam saying, so easily, "my mom."

Sam seeing what I couldn't - the similarities between us - made me take a long look at Sam, at me, and at our relationship. Life did not become idyllic, but our relationship changed permanently for the better. I started to see Sam for who he really was, rather than see in him motives and attitudes that belonged to someone else, and I learned to trust him and his emotions in ways I could not have before that moment.

We wouldn't have come as far as we have - either of us - without his revelation.

When Sam was a little boy, he once had a perfect day. Sam had kindergarten in the morning, and something exciting happened there - maybe an assembly or maybe just a great kindergarten day. Afterwards, his father took him to the grocery store when they were giving away lots of food samples, which Sam sampled liberally. Walking back to the car, Sam spied a penny on the pavement and scooped it up, exclaiming, "man, is this my lucky day or what?"

My birthday wish for my little boy all grown up is that he have a life full of lucky days - and that he never lose the ability to recognize them when they come along.

Happy Birthday, Mark!

May 17 is my brother Mark's 46th birthday.

Mark is the baby of the family. I was in first grade when he was born, old enough to appreciate having a new baby in the house. I still remember my pride when my first grade teacher, Margaret Chriswell, put her hand on my head on the playground and announced to another teacher, "April has a new brother."

Mark was my baby. He was cute: big blue eyes, blond hair, dimples. He was the little brother I walked up and down the big hill, first in his stroller, then holding his hand while he toddled. He's the one I taught to ride a bike without the training wheels. (There is a brother, Michel, in between me and Mark. Michel wrecked my position as "cute youngest child" when he was born, so he did not get wheeled around by me very much.)

I read to Mark, incessantly. One Fish Two Fish, Sam and the Firefly, Go Dog Go. I read The Hobbit to him early on, probably after I'd been introduced to it in fifth grade. In fact, I read to him so much that to this day he only somewhat jokingly blames me for his slow reading. "I never had to read," he'll say with a grin.

I left for college right after Mark finished grade school. Except for intermittent trips back, I was pretty much gone all through his junior high and high school years. So I missed out on seeing him in marching band (he was a drummer), seeing him run track (he was a distance runner), and seeing him take his girlfriend Jackie (now his wife) to the prom.

I was in on Mark getting his learner's permit, though. I was back in Delaware for a few weeks, Mark had just turned 16, and I'm the one who drove him out to BMV to take the test. When he came out grinning with the piece of paper in his hands, I tossed him the keys and let him drive back to our parents' house.

Heck, it was their car, not mine.

Mark has worn many hats over his lifetime. Brother, son, husband, father, friend, runner, Army sergeant, church member, volunteer, rock band drummer, fundraiser, percussion pit parent, Good Guy. Mark's attitude pretty much is "if the hat fits, wear it." He's worn them all well. Mark believes in God, Family, and Country, and is not ashamed to show it.

Mark is the brother you want at the family dinner table for the holidays and celebrations. He will keep up a running patter of wisecracks and funny observations about everyone at the table, including himself. Right after I was diagnosed with bone marrow cancer, we had a family Thanksgiving where everyone talked in hushed voices with tears in their eyes. Mark was the one who walked me out to my car (along with our older brother) and stood telling jokes about my being dead until we were all gasping for breath from laughing.

It sounds morbid, I know. Trust me, it wasn't. Mark was funny. I needed to laugh.

Mark was there for me 1000% when I was really sick and going through treatment. Mark knew the cancer world better than I did, having participated in various Team In Training events for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. He immediately got back into training, this time on a bike, named me his hero, and raised more money than anyone else did in central Ohio for the Lake Tahoe Century Ride that year. Physical problems, later diagnosed as a chronic liver disease, kept him from riding the whole route, but he rode the last 25 miles and called me from the finish line to tell me he had completed the ride. As his teammates came across the finish line, they too got on the phone. I had tears in my eyes listening to the cheers and whoops as they finished.

Mark was my hero when I was ill, and not because he raised money or rode a bike in my honor. No, Mark moved to the top of my Lifetime Hero List because he willingly ran interference for me with Mom, who in her anxiety over my illness would have me stressed out and crying two sentences into any conversation. Mark is the one who gently but firmly laid down the law with her. Mom, no more phone calls about other people's treatments. Or how so-and-so reacted to chemotherapy. And when April says she is tired and has to hang up or go home right that minute, she means it.

It didn't cure Mom, but it did slow her down considerably. Did I ever tell him "thank you" enough for that?

Last month, I got to see another side of my brother. He plays drums in his son's band, November Rain, and the band was in the local Battle of the Bands. Watching my brother transform himself from "just Mark" into a veritable Lord of the Drum Set was pretty amazing. Maybe it was the sunglasses. More likely it was the sheer concentration and enjoyment on his face as he whaled away with verve. Afterwards, I ran into our older brother, who said "that boy's got some talent. Who'd have known?"

For many years, Mark and I have kidded each other about getting old. Although I have seven years on him, he is the one who has taken aging harder. His 40th birthday just about did him in. Our respective chronic diseases have helped him put aging in perspective, even causing him to adopt my slogan: "It beats the alternative." I'm looking forward to his 50th birthday as cause for celebration for us both.

Despite the new attitude, we nonetheless continue to exchange cards harping on aging. Mine are way funnier than his. Sometimes he calls me after he opens them, laughing so hard he can hardly speak.

This year, though, no cards with dinosaur jokes on them ("Hi there, remember us? We sat behind you in homeroom!") or other cracks about his age. No gifts of fossils or dirt (as in "older than…"). All I sent him was a plain piece of paper, directing him to this blog so I could give a heartfelt shout out to my brother.

I have three brothers and one of them is having a birthday today. You know which one.

The one who's getting OLD.

(Love you, Mark! Happy birthday from your chronologically older but otherwise always way younger sister and her wonderful husband!)