Her Grandmother's Granddaughter

Mom,

How I wish you could have met her. She reminds me so much of you -- she has blue eyes like yours, and her laugh is infectious.  Her favorite color is pink.  You would have seen the irony in that.

She loves to sing.  We sing good morning to each other and we make up silly songs.  Sometimes we sing the Frozen soundtrack at the top of our lungs in the car.

She loves to cuddle with me.  In the evening, before bedtime, she curls up next to me on the couch. She talks a lot now. Sometimes she tells me about her day, or about what we are watching on TV.

We like to read books together.  She likes to point at the pictures and tell me what she sees. Sometimes she asks what the word is, and then she repeats it in the cutest little tentative voice.  It feels like she is learning 100 words a day.

When she wakes up too early, I take her in the big bed with me for a cuddle.  I am instantly transported back, 30-plus years and a couple hundred miles, to the big bed in the house in New Jersey.  I can still feel how much I was loved.  If nothing else, I hope to pass that on.

We miss you every day, but especially today.  Happy birthday.



(also posted at the OliRue baby blog)

The Landline

In the new house, we have a landline phone. Not that we really wanted or needed it -- after all, we live in a cellular world -- but the cable company gave it to us for free as part of our package. 

And so, almost six years after I last used them, I found myself pulling phones out of a box. The one corded phone had old batteries in it, and so it had to be thrown out.  Storing something away like that -- carelessly -- is so very unlike me.  But I remembered why I didn't take the batteries out in the first place: I didn't want to lose the last caller ID from my mom. 

It's gone now. 

And I threw out the phone. My husband says that's because I'm not crazy. Sometimes I'm not so sure.