We never spent a lot of time together growing up — for whatever reasons. I’m sure part of it (and I inherited this from her) my grandmother didn’t deal well with chaos. Too many evans/bennett kids in one place = chaos!

It took family losses to bring us together. Death, divorce, more death. The more it happened, the more insistent we became that we gather.

And so we have, in whatever groups can get there… we usually eat… depending where we are, we might drink champagne… and we always laugh… We have a wedding coming soon, what joy… and then we wait a while while the kids grow up a bit… but still we gather.

I wish i knew how to bring the California families into this… and how to spend more time with the California families… life, it is what it is. sigh. But what it is is sweet — at least from time to time when we can make it happen. Let’s all make memories while we can…

Love, it’s what we need. And when faces we love look back at us with faces that are very like ours, it’s pretty wonderful. I had to wait 50 some years to get it, but i’ll claim this as mine — and as wonderful. Peace sometimes looks just like you, and isn’t that grand!