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Friendship 101

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , on May 27, 2013| 2 Comments »

“There are people who make an art form out of not being intense. They can remain on an amusing yet completely repetitive level. I can’t operate that way.”

Do you remember when I said I wanted to join a writer’s forum, and the only way to log in was with a twitter account, so I joined the Twit-o-Sphere? Well, it’s through that writer’s website, “Medium,” that I found myself reading an important essay this morning on friendship: “The Games Women Play: Part 2” By Lauren Mechling (author, editor and saint).

The author interviews another author, Susanna Sonnenberg. about the ebb and flow of friendship.  She Matters, is a memoir  of Sonnenberg’s twenty most important female friendships done as a chapter-per-friend. They talk about neediness and intimacy, about expectations and loss. https://medium.com/the-lauren-papers/a30ac0d4b1d0

Sonnenberg asks, “What do you want out of a friend?” Mechling says she wants somebody she can call on the phone any hour of the day or night. Which means she wants her friend to answer her calls, and be there if she

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needs her. I had a different take on that question, although maybe it’s in the same general category.

I want a friend who knows where the spoons are in my kitchen.

For me it’s about the comfort of showing up and listening. My BFF Lee from MA showed up at the Rocker’s bris with armloads of flowers from her garden. No one asked her, she just knew what I needed and she always knew the right thing to say, to bring me back to myself. To help me see my best self, and even coax me toward grace when I was listing away. Here is Lee to the left at the Bride’s wedding; and the Bride’s Duke roomie Sally on the right, who just had a baby last week!

Obviously, no one person can fulfill every longing we may have for a friend or a mate for that matter. Is she intellectually curious; fun to be around; supportive in a good way; adventurous? We all know the sunny-day vs rainy-day friends paradigm. It’s a rare and wonderful thing when that type combines – it’s the lottery of friendship! And yes, things do change once our identity shifts into motherhood. There can be rifts, and ruptures, not all friends can stand the ebb and flow, the test of time.

Like a good marriage, a good friend will still love you with all your faults. “If I show you this, will you still love me? If I show you this, will you still be with me?”

Honesty and loyalty, pretty much says it all. Like the authors, I need to have a certain intensity in order to fuel a friendship, we need to go deep sometimes, soul-baringly deep. I feel lucky to have found a few good friends at this stage of my life, in my empty nest. ps The spoons are to the left of the kitchen sink.

County Fair 008FB

 

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A Daughter by Choice

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 12, 2013| 2 Comments »

Happy Mother’s Day! Mothers everywhere are waking up to breakfast in bed, or so we’re supposed to believe. I made myself some coffee in my new tiny, one cup Keurig since Bob left before dawn for the hospital. And the new mom, our daughter the Bride, is working at her hospital today too. But her Groom, “God bless him” as my Mother-inLaw Ada would say, did remember to send her flowers.

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Ada has been my MIL now longer than Nell Mahon was my foster mother. In fact, she went to Nell’s funeral with me. I can’t think of how many funerals we’ve been to together, and there’s nobody better to take to a funeral, or a wedding for that matter. I met Ada when Bob and I started dating in high school, and she was the one who found me in the hospital while I was visiting my foster father much later. Daddy Jim was dying then, just when Ada ushered me into Bob’s room to rekindle our friendship. Bob went into the hospital for a little minor surgery, and walked out with his future wife…thanks in large part to Ada.

Oh and one more funereal thought – Ada bought me my very own burial plot right after we married. To this day, we both think that was pretty funny! But she did purchase a whole space in the local cemetery for her family, her three sons, and their wives…

She always said she was on my side. That if Bob and I ever broke up, she’d take my side, “All the way baby!” You see, Ada was from Brooklyn. There was no pretense, no argument, what she said always happened. She had gone back to school while we were in high school, to get her degree in Marriage and Family Counseling, and in the late 60s until now, has always practiced in her home. She was going through her own divorce when Bob and I met up again near Daddy Jim’s hospital bed.

The youngest of three sisters, Ada had led a privileged life. Like many Jewish immigrants, her father was a tailor who came from Russia with nothing, and eventually owned a coat company in NY. She had a private car that would take her to school. She was expected to live at home until she married, this was before Betty Friedan. And she married a physician, like one of her older sisters. Unlike her sisters, she promptly moved out to the country, to the wilds of NJ, and had three boys.

Four Bridges was the bungalow colony her father started near their home in Chester, NJ. It was his retirement project, but also a way to keep the sisters coming back together every summer with their cousins and friends. I once gave Ada a painting, it was a picture of a house that had her name on it as a B&B, because she never met a stranger. Every time I would visit her, with the baby Rocker and young Bride in tow, she would have a house full of people, coming and going.

Ada is like Dolly Levi and Ruth Westheimer combined!

Well actually, she doesn’t have that Russian accent, it’s more Bedford Sty. She did get a doctoral degree and a certificate in sex therapy. I can imagine that went a long way when my teenagers told their friends their grandmother was a Sex Therapist. Here she is with the Bride at the Bug’s baby shower.

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This is the kind of joy she inflicts on everyone everywhere she goes! She is still living and working in the same house with my wonderful Father-in-Law, Baptist preacher turned therapist, turned woodcarver Hudson, who was the Officiant at the wedding. You know, that wedding in 2010 that started me blogging. Between them both, they now have 7 grandchildren and 2 great grandchildren. At 88, she is still as effervescent and full of life as ever. They just got back from a cruise to Spain. An amazing woman, I am so proud to call her Mother.

I’ve always said I married Bob to get this woman as my Mother-inLaw. Thank you Ada, for always being on my side. And I’ll always have your back too. Now if only someone could fix our knees.

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Birds of a Feather

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , on May 9, 2013| 5 Comments »

Last night, while making dinner, I heard Bob yelling from the living room, “You’ve got to see this, there’s a hawk…” and in the middle of my beans and rice he’s rushing into the kitchen to point out the commotion. Let it be said, I heard the commotion.  There is no TV in the kitchen so I can conjure up culinary delights quietly and without much fuss. One of the first questions the architect we unfortunately had to fire asked us was, “Do you want an open plan kitchen, or do you like this space separate?”  Since I actually cook in my kitchen, pots and pans everywhere, I thought it should be my haven of peaceful mess and creativity. “Private kitchen,” I said.

Turning off the burner, I spied a bunch of black birds buzzing around a tree, having a good old fashioned spring squak-fest. Following Bob’s finger’s line of sight I saw it. At this point my dear husband is proclaiming it to be an eagle. The American Bald Eagle is his favorite bird, really if he could be reincarnated he’d come back as an eagle and soar around on thermal winds. The hawk/eagle was just sitting very haughtily on a dead branch while these pesky black birds were telling him to move on. Bob quietly retreated to fetch his camera and here he is:    Osprey Web 20130508

When we were first married, we lived on the edge of a bird sanctuary in Pittsfield, MA. Wild Guinea Hens would visit our bird feeder and peck around on the ground to give us a show. Later, when we moved to the Jersey Shore, a Great Blue Heron would fly out over our garage most mornings for breakfast in the Shrewsbury tributary. When I discovered 2 old prints of these birds at an antique fair, the hens and the herons, I had them framed and hung in VA.photo copy 4 photo copy 5

Still not sure what bird should represent our Blue Ridge mountain home, I’ve been deciding between the Cardinal, the Blue Bird or the Woodpecker, all very abundant on our land. But truth be told, red-tailed Hawks are almost always flying in the valley.

After sending off the picture to a local birder, we were delighted to find out that this hawk/eagle was actuallyan Osprey!

The last time I saw an Osprey was in Martha’s Vineyard, nesting on top of a pole. But sure enough, this bird of prey likes to migrate through these parts in the spring and fall. Still we’re told, they are rarely seen in the Ivy Creek Natural Area which is a part of the  VA Birding and Wildlife Trail. http://ivycreekfoundation.org/ivycreek.html

Well we missed the annual meeting of the VA Society of Ornithologists, but I’m going to tell Bob to send his picture in to the eBird site http://ebird.org/content/va so they can document the Osprey’s fight path. Maybe he’s heading back to Menemsha pond, where the toddler Bride and I would dig for clams.

And a footnote: yesterday the Bride found a bird in her bathroom. It was a beautiful day so she had left her back door open; luckily she shooed it out the same door!

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And All That

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on May 7, 2013| 4 Comments »

How to begin? My Mother used to tell me a couple of things, repeatedly, that I’m sure she never said to my brothers: 1) “You have to suffer to be beautiful,” and 2) “You can never be too rich or too thin.”  I’m afraid that while combing and trying to braid my daughter’s wavy, sand-soaked hair at the beach I may have repeated her first message. Here is the Bride and Bug considering beauty products. I hope she doesn’t hear that message about beauty. photo copy 3

But I tried to banish the second from my mind.

In fact you can be too thin, and if you care to read about one woman’s struggle, Mika Brzezinski and her friend Diane Smith co-wrote a book together, Obsessed. It’s like Jack Spratt and his wife; Brzezinski went from a size 2 to a size 6 (and yes, I guffawed at this) and Smith, a fellow TV journalist, lost 75 pounds.

But Mika was honest about how she may be perceived as the mad, “skinny bitch.” They talked candidly about food as an addiction problem, as a public health problem when I happened to tune into their conversation one morning on Morning Joe, and it was enlightening. They were 2 sides of the same coin, a woman’s body image and our country’s dysfunctional obsession with food. It all started when Mika confronted her friend about her weight gain, calling her “fat and obese,” in case she didn’t hear the fat part. Smith called her a “food Nazi.” And then Mika confessed to a life-long struggle with anorexia and bulimia

Mika said, “How I eat, diet, and look has tied me up in knots my entire life, and I know I am not alone. I have been held hostage by food since I was thirteen years old. My body started filling out more than the figures of other girls in my class, and that set off what has become a thirty-year battle with my body image. Food has been my enemy.” http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/05/06/an-excerpt-from-mika-brzezinskis-obsessed/

My psychologist brother Jim has often said that people are either wrapped too tight or too loose. I worried when the Bride went off to Duke. She was surrounded by Type A young women who were wrapped pretty tight with body dysmorphia – exercising too much, throwing up in bathrooms. It was hard not to see it and not to buy into it. But my daughter is a smart cookie IMHO, and moderation was always her approach. I once heard a friend of hers in med school describe some food as “bad,” and I couldn’t help lecturing her about how food can’t be “bad” or good for that matter. Applying a moral code to ice cream for instance is ridiculous. But putting the spoon down before the pint is finished is a matter of choice. And I realize now, it’s much harder for some of us.

I had a dance teacher who used to say, “I only need a taste,” to be satisfied. What will power, what control she had over her hunger. I was always thin, without trying. I would drink a frappe in Boston on my way back from a dance class. But approaching 40, I was unhappy about moving from MA, I had put on about 10 pounds (don’t laugh, I was a size 10 and these things seemed important at the time) and took my anger out on food. I found an aerobic dance class I loved and started restricting food until I got down to 118, a size 6, with my clavicle protruding. Oh, the attention I got. People said I looked so good and yet I was desperate inside. Thankfully, my self-abusive relationship with food didn’t last long. We moved out of a suburb I hated to live close to the beach, in a town that was very much like New England. And I started writing again for another newspaper.

My feminist brain just loves to think – would this ever happen to a man? Do people ask men how they will juggle this new job with a family? Does that shirt make them look fat? So, here is a little play on that Dove commercial about women and body image. Enjoy!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/01/dove-real-beauty-parody-b_n_3191883.html

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A Tale of Two Sisters

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on May 5, 2013| 7 Comments »

I found out yesterday that my half-sister Shirley died. My sister Kay called to tell me. It was peaceful enough, she died in her sleep after refusing to be hospitalized for “low sodium.” I asked Bob what that means, and he said basically your system is shutting down. I have absolutely no memories of Shirley; she was 24 years older, she was having a baby at the same time I was born which I guess happened frequently back then. So, just as soon as I was born I became an aunt. She was out of the house long before our Year of Living Dangerously.

Shirley was the Flapper’s first child. The product of a dare, yes my mother married Shirley’s father on a dare. They met at a wedding in PA, and got along so well their friends dared them to get married. She was 16 years old, and I assume that kind of thing happened all the time too – the getting married at 16 part. Gi Closeup 20130505 Web

Before the Flapper’s first husband died, she had a son, Brian. At 21 she was widowed with 2 children. At first I thought their father died in the Great War, later I learned he died of a ruptured appendix, before penicillin was discovered. The Flapper moved to NYC with her sister in order to work, and left her children with their grandmother, my Nana.

And this is when the troubles started with Shirley. After awhile my beautiful mother moved back to PA and caught the eye of a young pharmacist at her street car stop. Enter my father, who promptly married her and insisted on adopting her 2 children…although maybe he didn’t since they never took his name. He raised them just like his own – the 4 who followed, Kay, Mike, Jimmy and then me. I told you this is all third hand knowledge.

The family folk tale is that Shirley never forgave the Flapper for taking her away from Nana, the woman she loved and considered her true mother. Certainly holding a grudge was a time honored tradition in our family. The result of this grudge fest is the eternal rift between Mother and Shirley. Show me a family that hasn’t experienced years of ‘not talking’ between relatives; still this mother/daughter feud was stellar in its length and complexity.

Recently I found out that Shirley contracted TB as a young, new mother. She was sent away to a sanitorium and her baby boy, the one who is my nephew, came to live with the Flapper after her accident. It was while looking through old pictures with Kay that I wondered who the baby was, the one who wasn’t me. The Flapper never told me – which is telling in itself – that after giving me up to foster care, while she was still in the hospital, she ended up caring for my nephew at home. Even Kay has no explanation for how this happened.

I was always told that I was never taken from my foster parents, Nell and Jim, because Mother was afraid of losing another daughter to a grudge fest. I have to think, considering our level of poverty, that we were lucky in avoiding placement in an orphanage, all of us. So maybe it was just the Flapper’s pride, which was fierce, that kept her from placing her first grandson in an orphanage. And even though she was bed-bound, crippled by that drunk driver, she would fight to keep him. Kay was 15, so she not only helped Mother with her physical rehab, she helped care for her younger brothers and her nephew. Without Kay, the middle of this family would not hold.

In this picture Shirley is on the far left, and Kay is on the far right standing. I wasn’t born yet.

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Technicolor Stars

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , on April 4, 2013| 3 Comments »

A poet I’m not. But listening to Maya Angelou read from her latest book, Mom, and Me, and Mom, made me wish I could craft words of poetry. She writes about her “terrible wonderful” mother who shipped her off to her grandmother at the age of 3 after a divorce. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/mar/30/maya-angelou-terrible-wonderful-mother They were reunited when she became a teen, and she learned to love and respect her mother, particularly after becoming a mother herself. I must read this book, because I can identify with being separated from my birth mother, and reuniting later in life. The Flapper let me go to live with her friends, because she was alone, widowed and finally crippled in that car accident, in our Year of Living Dangerously. It’s hard to imagine now, but a woman alone was not expected to work and raise a family in the middle of the 20th Century. There were no social safety nets at the time. If family or friends didn’t step in to help, often children would end up in an orphanage.

Still, Angelou called babies “Technicolor Stars.”

Yesterday I met the latest star in one of the sweetest young families in the Old Dominion. Born at 9 minutes after midnight, not even 24 hours old, MP’s mom asked me if I’d like to hold him. He had golden brown duck fuzz hair, his pink legs were still pulled up into his time-tested fetal position, and his umbilicus announced his newness to the world. He made little baby sounds that only angels can decipher, and his big dimple stamped his face with undeniable cuteness. I fell in love. 7 lbs, 7 oz. He’ll be going home today to meet his big brother and sister, and his grandmother and great grandmother from California. MP’s mom is an outstanding NICU nurse who is working toward her doctorate at UVA. She is a natural with a baby, and the dad is an ER doc who trained with the Bride. Lucky baby.

Between the polar opposite parenting types – the overly-attachment type vs the free ranging type – there is a happy medium. A sweet spot of consideration and caring. I’m thinking our friends could write a book, or a baby blog? How not to worry yourself sick with a newborn and prevent unnecessary food allergies! Believe me, with all the noise out there in parenthood land, a sensible, sane voice would be helpful. My friend Kath, although primarily a food blogger, does a good job with her baby blog. She has been my go-to for researching baby products and baby nutrition. Her son Maze is the same age as the Love Bug.
http://www.babykerf.com

Welcome home MP! Next stop on your technicolor journey, maybe the Saturday Morning City Market?
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An Easter Miracle

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , on March 31, 2013| 5 Comments »

Don’t worry, I’m not going to get all biblical on you. I have my fond memories of Sacred Heart Church shrouded in purple, singing in the choir, fake green grass in a basket, biting off the head of a chocolate Easter bunny. And later, hiding colored eggs and candy around my friend’s yard so all our friends’ children could come in their little Wellies and hunt for treasure. Spring is in the air, robins are bobbing their heads.

And hospital and health and safety workers are on the job year round, 24 hours a day. For them, pausing for a big family dinner, let alone searching for jelly beans, doesn’t really happen. What happens is saltines and peanut butter at the nurse’s station. The Bride is working, and so is Bob. And here’s what happened at my daughter’s ER.

A man in his 30s walked into the waiting room and promptly collapsed in a chair. He lost consciousness, nobody even heard a chief complaint. When they hooked him up to an EKG it was obvious he was having a major heart attack; I think they call it Vfib? My doctor daughter had the biggest guy in the room, a tech, pound on his chest while she got the paddles ready. The pounding didn’t help, so she shocked him with the paddles, and he converted but unfortunately he got belligerent and pulled everything out, then passed out. She shocked him again.

And he came back to life. He was discharged from the hospital yesterday.

He has a wife and 3 children and probably will never meet my daughter. And it made me think of the husband of a friend of mine in Pittsfield, MA. In his 30s too, he woke up one July 4th morning sweating, and instead of going to the ER, he took a shower. That is where he died, while his wife tried calling his doctor and finally called an ambulance, before 911. She had a new baby and a toddler so I made baked ziti for the shiva. And I helped her collect pictures of her husband for her children, because i know what it’s like to lose a father so young.

On this Easter morning, Christianity teaches that rebirth can happen to all those who seek God, who walk humbly. As my dear friend Eve quotes:

“I cannot help but think, on this Easter morning, of how many times I have been resurrected. Like so many others, I have known moments when I thought my life had entered a tomb. I saw that great stone rolling between me and the hope of any future I could imagine. But then, through God’s grace and healing, I emerged into a garden to find people who cared for me waiting, waiting for me to return to life. I pray, therefore, for all of those who have been resurrected like me. I celebrate this new life with all of you who have stepped out of the grave into the light of Easter.” S. Charleston

Many thanks to all those emergency personnel who are working today, and just a little note to the Easter bunny – really, you need a break?
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Hanging On

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , , , , on December 30, 2012| 2 Comments »

There’s snow on the ridgeline this morning. I’m back in my mountain home after 10 hours on the road with my 4 month old Bug and her parents. She did well for about 7 hours with many stops, which is 1 hour more than my limit in a car. And yesterday I did the hand off to the other set of grandparents for their New Year’s week visit. In the midst of this transition, after my long stretch of babysitting, I had a nightmare.

The Bride was leaning back on the balcony of a large white iconic building (hospital?) and she fell slowly over the edge. I watched incredulously but could not reach her in time. When I looked over, she was hanging on by her fingertips. “Help her!” I yelled at Bob and then promptly woke up in a sweat. She had worked 5 straight nights in a row (including Christmas Eve and Christmas) and before that, 4 daytime shifts. Shift work takes its toll on a body, just ask any nurse or police officer.

“Society is oriented toward traditional daytime work hours and work at night will often intensify fatigue and reduce alertness. Workers generally will not acclimate to night work, and sleep patterns will generally be disrupted so the non-work periods do not provide full recovery, resulting in sleep deprivation. Studies suggest that it can take up to 10 days to adapt to a night time work schedule.” http://www.osha.gov/OshDoc/data_Hurricane_Facts/faq_longhours.html

When I was writing about normal holiday stress, I didn’t factor in having to change your circadian rhythm or nursing a 4 month old baby. I always joked that Bob became a director because he didn’t want to work nights; only it’s not a joke. He won’t do nights, he sleeps…at night. If he met a doc who wanted to work nights, he would hire him/her immediately. Keep this in mind future EM residents, if you are a night owl, you have an advantage.

Naturally, the Love Bug is off her schedule. Babies will change it up just when you figure it out, but this little nugget has been in 2 different homes the last few days and her mama was away many nights and sleeping-in many mornings. I tried to explain it all to her, I told her that she can be very proud of her mommy for saving lives. I told her that things will get better in the New Year. Her daddy and I did our best to play guitar and sing her to sleep at night. Hang on baby girl. Our country may sail over a cliff, but your mama is on solid ground.

My big news of Christmas week is the birth of 2 brand new baby girls! Congratulations and welcome to the world Great Nieces’ Francesca Lynn and Evan Margot. Have a very happy and healthy New Year everyone!
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Home

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , on December 25, 2012| 4 Comments »

Someone once told me that you have to live in a place for at least 10 years before it becomes home. When I was young, I called Victory Gardens home. It was a development in NJ for the support staff that worked at an arsenal during WWII. It was meant to be temporary; four rooms and one bath made out of concrete. We lived on Washington Avenue, all the streets were named after presidents. I would dream about this house for years, because this is where I learned what love is.

When you marry an Emergency Physician, you also learn to love moving. It was never easy. I’ve made friends in other states that will never be replaced, the kinds of friends who know where the spoons are in your kitchen. Women who would supply all the flowers and food for the Rocker’s bris without ever asking or saying a word about it. Women who would show up to escort an au pair to the train station, thereby saving her from physical harm and me from an arrest record.

And I learned to love each place. The snowy farmhouse at the edge of a bird sanctuary in the Berkshires. The brick, mid-century modern between two rivers on the Jersey Shore. And I’m learning to love my view of the Blue Ridge, on the cusp of Mr Jefferson’s Monticello and his Academical Village. This is the place where the Bride met her Groom and now the next generation is just beginning. They are making their home in the Music City and the Rocker and Ms Cait are feathering a new nest after super storm Sandy.

“Home” is the best gift we can give our children. That feeling that we belong, that we are loved unconditionally. It doesn’t matter where we find ourselves today. We were all tucked in our beds, in TN, VA and NJ. Well except for the Bride. Santa found her anyway. Wishing you all a warm and lovely Christmas.
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Slow Knitting

Posted in Books, Journaling, Wedding, Country, tagged , , , , , , on December 23, 2012| 6 Comments »

While I was searching for some old pictures, I pulled down a big Frye boot box from the top of my closet. Inside I discovered the purple sweater that my Nana knit, probably around the turn of the last century. It was chock full of cables, an Aryan style, and since I knew it was a tight fit at 16, almost six decades later I didn’t have to try it on. I want to give it to the Bride; and I want to teach the Love Bug how to knit like a laidback knitter when she gets older!

Yesterday I walked into the Haus of Yarn in search of a certain size needle and walked out with this book, “10 Secrets of the Laidback Knitters, A Guide to Holistic Knitting, Yarn and Life,” by Vicki Stiefel and Lisa Souza. Post Christmas sales were in the air, (as in, “Come back on Wednesday when everything is half off”) and a woman was delivering a big box from Nothing Bundt Cakes, http://www.nothingbundtcakes.com I love this knitting store, they had fudge in the back and invited me to their Thursday night knit club. Back to the book, there are all different kinds of knitters, on a spectrum from the up-tight anxious type seeking perfection all the way to someone who knits in a recliner and doesn’t mind a dropped stitch.

I have to admit, I don’t like making mistakes, but I’m aware that what I want to be is a laidback knitter. And now I know how! I may never do any spinning or roving, but I do know where most of the yarn I use comes from. And I can still walk down the road to the Rivanna River Alpaca farm and say “Hey” to my friend DeeDee. Her animals make the softest fiber in the world. Thanks to The Knitting Lady, I don’t fear dropping stitches or even ripping out rows of wool with abandon. I can say with satisfaction, I am the slowest knitter ever! “Slow” in the sense of the slow food movement; and to be fair, in the sense of time spent on a project…

Have a slow moving Sunday y’all. As our President said, “Drink some eggnog.” I’m working on a rosy pink dress for my little Bout de Chou – translation “tiny piece of cauliflower!” I intend to keep knitting…and writing about gun control, in light of the tone deaf statements of the NRA. Let’s bring our voices to Washington via petitions, phone calls and those really hard to ignore, snail mail letters. Slow and steady will win this race.
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