I love this picture! It came in an email from Loopy friend Valerie in Canada, with the subject line: “Future Loopy Ewe Customers”. This is her two daughters and a neighbor friend, all knitting on the front porch. Isn’t it a great photo? I hope these three will have fond memories of summers and knitting when they grow up. (And lots of finished projects to show for it.) Special thanks to Valerie for forwarding the photo and giving permission for me to share it with all of you. 🙂
It’s time for our May blog contest! Since this is Memorial Day Weekend in the U.S., I’ve been thinking about memories a bit. Memories of people now gone, and memories of times past. If you could re-live one day/moment/event over, what would it be? (Well, it doesn’t have to be your ALL time favorite thing – just one thing you’d like to re-live or re-visit.) I would love to re-visit a day with each of my kids when they were about 3 years old. Knowing who they are at this point in their lives, I think it would be fun to go back and re-visit a typical day in their three year old life. (Three years old – that has to be one of the funnest ages in the world. Talking up a storm, personality in abundance, old enough to carry on discussions but young enough to still be hilarious with what they come up with!) I have totally enjoyed each stage/age as our kids have grown up, but I’d love to re-visit “three” with them. What about you? What event or day would you like to re-visit? Leave a comment and I’ll do the random generator thing next Friday (6/1) to pick a winner for the May Loopy Loot. (Edit: oops – I forgot I’d be out of town on June 1st, finding new fun stuff for all of us at the TNNA Market. Watch for the Loopy Loot winner on Monday, the 4th!)
Today’s recipe is one of my favorites from my mother-in-law. We have a big rhubarb plant that was transplanted from her house in Iowa to our house here in St. Louis several years ago. I picked the stalks and made this delicious dessert last week. I imagine you could substitute any fruit in place of the rhubarb, but be sure to adjust the sugar amounts along with it. This dessert has …. um …. a bit of sugar in it. To give you an overabundance of energy for a few minutes counteract some of the tartness of the rhubarb.
Rhubarb Dreams
Blend:
1 cup Flour, 5 Tbl. powdered sugar, 1/2 cup margarine
Press in bottom of 9×9 pan and bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes.
Beat:
2 eggs, 1 1/2 cups sugar, 1/4 cup flour, 1/2 tsp. salt, 2 cups chopped rhubarb
Spoon over crust and bake another 35 minutes at 350 degrees.
You can also double this recipe and make it in a 9 x 13 pan.
Serve with whipped cream or ice cream.
We’re looking forward to a long weekend around here (Monday is a holiday) and you can bet that there will be knitting involved. I need to start my socks for my Sockapalooza Pal and I picked out one of the new colors from Scarlet Fleece for her, as it goes along with her preferred color suggestion. I’m still on a quest to find more knitting time each week. It’s one of my summer goals.
FYI – The vet visit was a regular checkup/yearly shot appointment this week, but Zoe and Casey want to thank all of you who inquired to make sure they were ok.
I’ll fill you in on more yarn news next week. I have two new yarn lines on order that are going to be fun, as well as new patterns and new accessories. And the TNNA – The National NeedleArts Association – Market is next weekend in Ohio, so I’ll be looking for more great lines and ideas that we all “need” need. WH thinks maybe I ought not to go. 🙂
Sheri sowhatwouldyouliketore-liveforfun?Leaveacommenttoenterthecontest!
If I could live one day over, it would probably be one day in the summer of 1961 when the women of our family (mother, grandmother, sister, aunt, cousin & I) and the women of another family , newly arrived from Italy (mother and 3 daughters) all took a day long river cruise from Detroit to Cleveland and back. The weather was beautiful, and everyone was healthy and happy. We had a great time together. My cousin and I still have the memories of that day. It was really the last time that we were all together, a week or so later, my uncle moved the family to California. The following year marked the beginning of many varied health problems and the decline of our once close family. At least we have our memories.
Sheri, In response to your question I have one day in particular that I would love to go back and re-live is my wedding day. My brother is getting married this year, several days after my husband and I will celebrate our wedding anniversary, so my mind keeps being drawn back to when we got married. (Espically considering that his guest list is double what our was – Yikes!!).
But I think back to all the people that we had there to help us celebrate our big day and how some of them have since passed (espically my mother in law who I did adore and greatly miss. I would just love to have that time with everyone again, before our lives changed with their passage and we continued to venture further down to our present path.
Hard to pick just one. But I would have to say when I was about 3 or 4 and we lived on Midway Island and Bob Hope stopped on his way to Vietnam. He was a very special and funny man. Although, I would also love to relive the 3 years spent in Panama. I loved playing in the jungle, going to the beach all the time, and just being a kid in a tropical climate. But if I had to pick just the one, it would still be Bob Hope. He didn’t have to put on a show in the middle of the night during a refueling stop but he did. That is the main thing I remember about Midway besides the beaches and the gooney birds. Okay, my brother is a permanent reminder but he doesn’t remember the place..
I have such a terrible memory…so I’d love to relive any moment from my childhood when all of my family was there. Just so I can get a good clear memory of it. Maybe one of the Christmas dinners at my grandmother’s house. Or maybe the first time my mom introduced me to the man she was dating, the wonderful guy who would later become my stepdad. I was ten, and I vaguely remember it, but I was probably distracted by some silly ten-year-old thing and I’d love to recall every little detail – because it’s just cool to remember meeting your dad. 🙂
My first thought was I’d love to go back to the day my son was born…
(he’s 3 now and YES- he’s hilarious)
But thinking more about it…
I’d have to say the day I met my husband.
It holds a sort of magic in my head now- and I’d love to go back and see how I/he really was.
and Sheri- are you going to be in OH for the knitters connection?
I’m in columbus and I’ll DEFINITELY be there 🙂
I would definitely re-live July 3, 2000 the day that our first son was born. We tried to start a family for 7 years before our angel, Gabriel, entered our lives. Our 3rd shot at IVF worked and after a lovely pregnancy (truly — it was wonderful despite swollen feet and 40 lbs. of water weight) we had a good ‘ol fashioned hospital delivery that was everything I could’ve imagined.
The best part of all was when the doctor asked my husband if he was “ready to get to work.” DH assumed he would be cutting the cord after Gabe’s birth — alas, he got to “assume the position” and with our wonderful doctor standing behind him HE DELIVERED GABE! What a gift for us! It was the icing on the cake to finally have a beautiful baby in our arms and seeing my proud and excited husband in the catcher’s postiion. I cry most every time I think of it. It was so very very much fun to give birth to our beautiful baby!
I have no idea what I’d relive, but I would like to say that I really wish I was your sock pal 😛 Oh to get socks straight form the Loopy room.
I would probably go back to the day I met my birthmother. I was so nervous and scared. If I could go back with the feelings and knowledge I have now, I could be calm and really enjoy that moment.
I would love to relive one of those hot summer nights the year before my senior year in college. That’s when I met my husband and we would have so much fun staying up all night talking. All my friends were in town and we would gather together, play cards, and laugh.
Wow, this is kind of like the play, Our Town, so I shouldn’t pick something really huge like the day I was married or anything like that. I get to be me, now, right? I get to watch and see what really happened? I’d like to relive the day that my father came to visit me on the ranch. It was the last time I ever saw him, but I was so young and he had been gone from my life for so long that I didn’t attach enough importance to it. I just remember the blond man sitting on the gate with me; I might have been five or six.
I’d love to relive telling my grandmother that I was pregnant with my older daughter. My grandmother raised me, so sharing that I would be a mother soon was a magical moment. I would also love to relive the moments I had my girls. Seeing them and holding each of them for the first time was unbelievable. And realizing how much I knew about them just from sharing a body for 10 months. Sniff. 🙂
I have a couple of very special moments I’d like to re-live……one was meeting Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones. I have been a big fan since the beginning, and in my 20’s I was just in love (lust !) with Mick Jagger. Last year when they went on tour I actually won front row seats to see them in San Francisco at Pac Bell Park. Imagine how excited I was!!! A couple of days later I got a call from the radio station telling me that they had arranged a “meet and greet”…..heaven! When we got to meet them it was so fast just time enough for “hi” , shake hands all around and a picture. Sigh…
But my very, very special moment that I would like to re-live is the day I got married. My husband and I had been living together for 16 years and raised 5 children together. When they all grew up and moved out we decided to get married. It was a wonderful wedding in Mendocino, CA with all of our friends and children there. When the time came for us to each say something to eachother during the ceremony, my husband turned to me and all he could say is “16 years….” and became so emotional that he started crying. Of course so did everyone else….incuding me.
That moment is burned in my heart forever.
Hmmm… I would love to re-live (over and over) when husband proposed to me. We were in Roatan, Honduras on a mission trip and right before dinner on the last day that we were there he told me that he wanted to get a picture of us, with the island of Roatan in the background. So we kayaked out to a small island of coral on the reef and he tells me to sit down and proposed with the sun setting in the background.
Makes me grin like crazy when I think about it! 😛
Hope you have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend!!
When I was growing up, I used to spend alot of time at my grandmother and grandfathers house. I would love to re-live just one of those ordinary evenings making strawberry shortcake in the kitchen with my grandmother and then the three of us sitting down to eat it for supper! That would never have happened at home, as my dad didn’t think that strawberry shortcake was “dinner food”.
We had so many happy times together…. I still miss them greatly, even after over 30 years…
I used to do a lot of theatre in high school. In 10th grade I was able to audition for the senior theatre arts play and I was cast as the crazy grandmother in The House of Bernarda Alba. An all female cast. I can’t think of anything more fun than that part. I was old, completely whacked out, fed dog water and got to run around the stage screaming in a dirty ripped wedding gown about running off to get married, got carried off the stage still kicking and screaming and had a baby llama that I thought was my own. By far the best play I was ever in, with this amazing cast. I would love to relive the closing night performance and the cast party afterwards. It’s hard to really grasp just what a sense of belonging we all had and how much fun we had and how we celebrated every moment of it because we knew it was something really special… I really miss performing.
I think I would relive a day when I was about 12 or so, and my family had been visiting my grandmother and extended family. I rode back to Atlanta with my sister and we spent the trip singing Disney songs and “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin'” at the top of our lungs. My sister died shortly after that, and I just remember that day as being so perfect….
The one “event” I would love to re-live, is the time I spent living in Germany when my now 23.5yo dd was a toddler. I agree with the 3 yo kid thing. Mine was a riot. Her dad (my ex) was military, we lived in an American community, but I took everything so for granted. The history, the scenery, the food, the beer. 😉 It’s difficult to explain now, through the cloudy lens of time, to others who didn’t share the experiences. It was horrible and wonderful all at the same time, if that makes sense. He wasn’t “the one” for me, but the culture was so extraordinary, it almost made up for it. Plus, I miss all the wonderful people that I met there, both German *and* American. Truth be told, a German girlfriend got me knitting again after a teen-aged hiatus. (I learned when I was 5 or 6). She could churn out a sweater every 1.5-2 weeks, just riding public transportation to work/school. I was in awe.
This is lame, but any day with my mom. Even a bad one.
Hmmm, if I could go back and choose any moment to relive, it would be an afternoon spent with my grandfather making jam. When I used to visit my grandparents’ house in the summer, Grandpa and I would walk down to the end of the road where there was a huge blackberry bush, and pick berries until our buckets were full. Then we’d go home and I’d “help” him make jam. Of course, when I was 6 or 7, “helping” probably meant putting the bucket on the counter while I ran off to play somewhere else and then coming back a few hours later to taste test the completed product. It sure was fun though. My grandpa died last spring, but I still think of my grandpa whenever I eat blackberry jam (it’s one of my favorites).
Since we have wedding on the brain in our household (one this weekend and another one in three weeks), I would love to go back and relive my own wedding day. I was so young and nervous then that I know I missed a lot of moments that I was too freaked out/busy to notice. If I could do it again, I’d know to stop about every 30 minutes and just take a good look around me and see everyone having a wonderful time and really appreciate it more. It was the best day of my life and I’d love to have a do-over.
I’d like to relive my teenage years, knowing then what I know now. Just kidding!
Have a great weekend Sheri et al.
I’d like to relive or revisit a day when my grandmother (the knitting one) was alive. but I’d like to do it with my current knowledge intact so that I could actually learn more from her. I think she used to make up the pattern as she went along for everything she knit so I’d like to learn what she knew that made that possible now that I might actually understand her if she talked about it. I’ve got the card that some knitting needles came on with scribbles on the back in her writing that seem to be pattern directions or rather notes of some kind. I’d love to know what for.
I would relive a day with my Dad, before he got sick. He had Alzheimer’s for several years before his death, and sometimes it’s hard for me to remember him before the illness. Maybe a normal Sunday from my childhood, when we would get home from breakfast after church, change our clothes, and do stuff around the house. And in the evening he would play the organ and sometimes sing. He was a warm, kind person and I miss him.
I would want to re-live a day in which I was performing in the school musical…probably Grease since I had a part! I miss being in shows and I interpret them whenever I get a chance….but I’d love to do it over again!
That is a tough one. One of the things that I will always remember and miss the most, are those middle of the night feedings. I miss getting up in the middle of the night, when all was quiet, and it was just me and baby. Quietly nursing. Sitting in our favorite chair. Smelling that wonderful baby smell. Listening to those funny little baby noises. Watching those long eyelashes flutter back closed. The only moments I get like that anymore are when one of the boys are sick. That seems to be the only time they stay still now!
A day with my Mom before Cancer came. And if it could be even more perfect a day with my Mom and my Grandparents when they were healthy and full of life. And if I could invent a day I never had I would have My Grandfather spend one whole day with my boys. He would have adored them,and they him.
I started out thinking of all the times I want to relive with family etc. Then, I started counting the blessings I have now. A little weepy. Then, I realized – wrong time to do this when you are PMSing!!
I’d like to do our wedding weekend over again. Not that I don’t remember most of it, it’s only been 7 years, but it was such a fabulous 3 day party with lots of family and friends, and there’s plenty of conversations I missed, and people I wish I’d spent a few more minutes with.
If I could go back and relive any moment, I think I would relive my grandpa ‘s100th birthday party. I was to in to myself at the time and little did I know that it would be his last one. I should of really celebrated with him and all the wisdom he had.
I would relive the birh of each of my children. Not the labor and delivery part but the getting to hold them for the first time part. There’s nothing like holding your son or daughter for the first time all fresh and new.
Have a wonderful weekened!
I would relive my first kiss! (It was with my husband and I was 24, btw.) I had to sit down after. We still laugh about it!
I don’t think I would want to relive a day, but a time would be the chance to talk to my Dad. He died when I was 15, so he missed so many milestones. I think he would have liked me, but I would love to have day to sit and just chat with him. And, this is a lovely idea for a contest. I’ve read the other submittals and every one is worthy of a prize.
I’d would have to say I would revisit the day my grandmother the last time she got to see all 4 of my small kiddos (Christmas 2005). She passed away 2 months later from a 3 year battle of ovarian cancer. But that day, she was having a very hard day, but when she saw my kids she smiled and watched them play. Towards the end of her battle, she would just sit and stare and say that she was “putting it all in her memory bank” . So, why would I pick that day? Because I lived with my grandparents for my senior year of high school as well as 3 years after. My grandmother was also the one who taught me to knit. And, because that is the last memory my kids have of her. So I would go back and make sure that everyone would have had extra hugs and kisses!
I’d love to live the day I tell my parents, I’m pregnant. It hasn’t happened yet but it seems to be all I can think about lately. We’ve just started trying so it’s all hush hush for right now. It will be their first grandchild and I know they will be thrilled.
It would probably be a random summer day when I was 9 or 10 on my grandma’s farm…long days in the sunshine with no responsibilities and running wild with dirty feet, lol.
I would love to relive all the milestones todate in my life…my wedding, my son’s birth (he’s 24), his high school and college graduation and I would love to be able to go spend more time with my Grandma in Illinois. Her and I have so much in common – knitting and quilting to name a couple. AND she has rhubarb growing right outside her back door. Always making rhubarb pie. She will be 98 on May 28th! I’ve been thinking Sheri, have you put up your special doors from your Grandparents house? Regarding the TNNA show: I live 30 minutes from Columbus. If you’d like to come and see where alot of your yarn now lives, let me know 🙂 Have a great Memorial weekend! Kristi
If I could live one day over again it would be the Bands of America performance back in 2001. I was in the University of Massachusetts Marching Band and I was the cymbal line section leader. I had 12 cymbal players that year and we were playing the musical Tommy. Now, BOA is a very big deal in the marching band community and we travelled from Amherst, Ma all the way to Indiana to the RCA Dome for this performance. Hundreds of hours of practice. Thousands of people would be watching our every move; after all we’re the best college drumline in the country. The night before the assistent percussion director decided he wanted to insert a huge 32 count visual. This might not seem like a big deal, but when you have 12 cymbal players, 2 plates per player, and a visual that occures on quarter and eighth notes, it’s a big deal. It took over 12 hours of practice, but we nailed it. It was amazing. I cried right on that field. I was so proud. Phi-Beta-Delta.
I lost my younger brother, James, in a motorcycle accident when he was 21. I would like to relive the day he was born. He was born at home, with a midwife, my dad and our labrador Lassie in the room. My older sister and I were in the next bedroom, bundled up in the same bed until my dad came to get us to see our new little brother. When we entered the room, mum had James wrapped up in her arms, Lassie was sitting right beside her panting with pride. Great day!
A good day to relive … hmmm, not today. I cannot seem to think of anything really outstanding. However there was a period of time when I had a great love… many of those days were nice.
A day I would love to re-experience is the day I brought my son, CJ, home from the hospital. I didn’t think that day would ever come. I bawled and bawled the day I left the hospital with empty arms, especially as I watched other moms going home with their babies.
CJ was born 15 weeks early, after a long labor and desperate attempts to stop labor. The docs were very clear before he was born about all the handicapping conditions he would likely face, if he even lived. We were even given the choice of not intervening medically, not putting him on a ventilator, because “once he’s on a vent, it will be hard for you to get approval to take him off, no matter how badly handicapped he might be,” the docs told us. CJ was born weighing a whopping one pound, 12 ounces. Within a couple of days, like all babies, he dropped weight, and got as low as one pound 5 ounces.
Finally, when CJ was 3.5 MONTHS old, weighing FOUR POUNDS and 6 OUNCES he was allowed to come home. His dad and I were told the night before that he was ready to come home the next day. What a flurry of activity our house became! After all those months of waiting, the next 24 hours were a complete blur. I’d love to go back and savor his homecoming.
PS CJ will turn 11 years old this summer! 😀
The day I’d like to relive is any of the summer days I spent with my grandfather. He died when I was 18, and I never got to have an “adult” conversation with him. He was a quiet man who never said much, so I’d like to think that I could ask him questions and get him to start telling stories.
Ya, three is fun. I like how they mispronounce words. My son used to say “gimber” instead of finger…it was so cute and funny when he would come crying “I hurt my gimber!” And both my kids said “Pocky” for popcorn.
I think the day I would like to re-live would have to be one of the days of my honeymoon. We went to Hawaii. I remember how the very air smelled of flowers when we got off the shuttle at our hotel. We stayed in a hotel in Waikiki right off the beach…it was across the street. We sat on the balcony and I thought it was so cool how as far as you could see on the horizon, the ocean would meet the sky in a perfect flat blue line. Having grown up in Seattle I was used to seeing mountains in the distance! There was a Denney’s in the hotel and there weren’t any windows. It was like if you were in a regular Denney’s except where the windows would be it was all open and surrounded by beautiful tropical plants…and a breathtaking view of course!
I also liked that on their menu they had mahi mahi as the regular fish…like we have cod here. It’s funny because no matter where my husband and I have gone we always eat at least once at a fast food chain! In Hawaii it was Denney’s and Jack-in-the-Box and in Vegas we ate at McDonalds! It’s the familiarity that’s comforting I guess. Plus I’m not a buffet person….I’m a little bit of a germophobe and I can’t eat that much in one sitting.
We went to see Pearl Harbor and took the tour out to the Arizona memorial….that was VERY cool. We also went to the Dole Plantation. Have you ever had pinapple that fresh? It’s HEAVEN. It’s like a whole different fruit than the canned stuff. Oh, and mangos….yum! I’m hoping we can go back someday. We decided next time we’ll rent a car and drive around a lot more.
Thanks for helping me bring back the memories 🙂
~Jill
There are so many days I would like to live over. Like Karen in Toledo, my youngest daughter was born prematurely (4 months early) and weighing in at only 1 lb 8 oz. After 88 days we were finally able to bring her home, and now she is 5 1/2 years old, and doing really well! 🙂 We watch in amazement as she plays T-ball with her peers. Left-handed and all! My oldest daughter is also a miracle, and she is 14. She is a special girl, and each year we visit St. Jude Children’s research hospital in a search for THE cure. Probably the day we get one will be the day I will want to live over and over.
As for me, I would also like to re-live some of the time spent with my Great Nana and my Nana. They are both the only knitters in my family, and they both have knit these beautiful afghans – with beautiful cables. I would like to spend more time with them, learning how to knit as they did. Nana mentioned to me tonight as I was knitting my current sock at her house, that I hold the yarn in my hands the same way that she did (she can’t knit anymore due to arthritis). I never payed attention to those kind of things when I was little. So, I’m proud to hold my yarn like my Nana! When I was small, I was just knitting away with my sticky hands on the plastic needles and using the variegated yarns (the usual 70’s combo). You know, just happily knitting row after row of garter stitch. So, I’ve promised her a pair of socks in the near future. What a joy to make for her!
Sheri – there are too many moments to savor and live over. BUT the best is yet to come, and I try to cherish each moment! 🙂
When I was 16 years old, my parents scraped together enough money to send me to the Sea Education Association (http//www.sea.edu) Summer and Sea program.
Ten days on land, learning about nautical science, marine biology and maritime studies, as well as running rampant in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. We toured the marine science centers in the area, did studies on the beach, learned to sail on a mock ship, and made new friends.
And then, once the 10 days were over, the next 10 days of the program started – 10 days on-board a double masted schooner, sailing and navigating the boat ourselves (with supervision, of course). We were broken into three, rotating, 24 hour shifts, we ran science experiments, plotted courses, raised and dropped sails.
I will never forget the day when we first saw Them, humpback whales breeching in the distance. Two weeks of not saying the word “whale” had finally paid off, we though. Two minutes later, one came right up to the boat, stuck his head out, and looked at us. And then swam under the boat, never to return.
Two days later, i could hear VA, our first mate, screaming her head off. “RIGHT WHALE! WHATEVER YOU’RE DOING GET OVER HERE!” and there, off the starboard side of the ship, was a Right Whale, incredible endangered and swimming for us all to see. Some people sail their whole lives and never get to see one of those.
Later that week, we ran into a sudden thunderstorm. You could see the grey clouds racing towards up, like a great black wall in the sky. The water began to churn, the wind began to blow, the ship keened to side until the rail was almost under-water. And a group of high schoolers, who had only known each other for 2 weeks or so, suddenly grouped together as a team, brought all the sails down, and steered the ship into calmer waters. Nothing special for an experienced sailor, but for us, it was proof that we were capable, that we could handle a crisis away from home and away from land.
The most beautiful thing, however, that I remember is sitting at the bow, at 3am. Watching the sky, which being early August was occasionally graced with a shooting stars, and watching the bow, which was flashing green with bioluminescent plankton. When suddenly they appeared, a pod of bottle nose dolphins playing in the wake. You could barely make out what they were, instead appearing to be magical, green glowing orbs dancing in the bow’s wake.
I learned a lot of things on that trip. Most of all, however, I think I learned a lot about who I was.
So many magical moments – looking back, I’ve been blessed with a life-time of great moments. And here I am now at 42 back in school to be a nurse, and start a whole new chapter of wonderful moments!
I would revisit a day I spent with my paternal grandfather and grandmother. Both of them died when I was young (my grandfather when I was 4 and my grandmother when I was 9). I think it would love to hear all the stories they could tell me.
I would love to relive the day after I was married. My husband is not a vocal man (is there such an animal?) but on that day he told me fully and in detail how much he loved me and why. It was a very tender and precious moment.
Oh three was so fun with our oldest. She’s a chatterbox and you never knew what she was going to say next. She was our constant entertainment. 🙂
There are several things that I would love to revisit so it’s tough to pick one. I think I’d revisit any time when my grandpa was alive. The time he spent with us kids in the summer or when he would spend with my oldest daughter. He never got a chance to meet my youngest. I was 7 months pregnant when he past away last year.
Oh new yarn…..there is always a need for new yarn. Come on August, hurry up again get here. 🙂
I’d love to relive a day with my Papa (maternal grandfather). One of the days where we were “going to town” in his massive Lincoln towncar. We were riding, me buckled in the seat next to him, silent in my teenage “above it all” mentality and he sat in the driver’s seat, stearing that land yacht toward town and the grocery store, his Izod crocs both facing the inside of his leg, not his ankle, because he could never keep them straight. I would love to relive that day when a big bug smacked the windsheild and left a smooge and Papa looked over at me and asked, “Do you know what the last thing that went through that bug’s head was?” And I answered something silly and simple and he replied, “His a**.” It was in that moment, in that car, that I finally saw him for the first time as someone real, not just some silly old man. I’d love to relive that day and let him know how much that meant to me. It’s always those simple things that stick. 🙂