Holy Cannoli! It's an Anole!

I could hardly keep my eyes open after Downton Abbey was over last night. I do love that show. One might say I am a little obsessed with it, but not in an unhealthy way.

Poor Edith

Struggling to stay awake, I finally gave in and headed off to bed at a normal hour, about 10:30, and fell asleep promptly like most other people who sleep well will do. Maggie was nestled beside me, hadn't moved since we settled into a mutually acceptable position, her tail just brushing my jaw and her head about level with my hip, stretched out like a barrier to stop me from toppling over the edge; her dead weight, as usual, trapping me under the sheet with no hope of escaping without disturbing her.

And she somehow knows I would never dare disturb her. It's something I've written about before, but to refresh your memories, I grew up in a house with 3 siblings and only one or two cats at any given time. If you were lucky enough for the cat to choose your bed that night, you never moved, not a muscle, lest you disturb the little feline and run the risk of her removing herself to someone else's bed. Cats are masters at playing hard to get. But back to last night.

Suddenly, I awoke, tortured because of that blasted mosquito bite on the front of my ankle that had been troubling me for the last two days. The driveway party on Friday night was fun, but one nasty bugger got me and it has been driving me crazy ever since.

The heck with Maggie, I shoved her off the bed and she landed with a thump on the floor. I made my way to the bathroom and tried to be quiet so as not to waken the sleeping giant on the other side of my bed. I turned on the light and squinted into the cabinet looking for the anti-itch cream that hadn't been working, but was my only hope for sleep. Having applied way too much of it to slide back under the sheets, I made my way to my laptop in the other room, checking the clock glowing in the kitchen on my way. 2:42. Hmmm.

I played a couple of games on line to take my mind off of the persistent itching, giving in to scratching a couple of times. Now, fully awake my mind started wandering. I had time to write a blog post, I thought. Sometimes I do my best thinking at 3 AM. But not always. Instead, I started to do some Google searches. I had been told earlier in the day that the little lizards I have been calling geckos were actually called anoles (Rhymes with cannolis.) so I Googled them.

Sure enough, all this time I've been telling Maggie these little things were geckos. "Maggie, Get the gecko!" spoken in an excited whisper will bring her immediately to the screen of the lanai looking for the little things. She can't get to them, of course, but she does like to fantasize. I can't believe it after two plus years and I just found this out! But whispering "Maggie, get the anole!" just doesn't sound as exciting and I will probably continue to let her think that they're geckos.

This is an anole.

This is a Florida House Gecko. They both eat mosquitoes.

But reading about these lizards that often end up in our lanais, made me start wondering about the word 'lanai'. This is how my brain works lately. Hopping from one thing to another, usually there is some logic to how I get from one topic to the next, but not always. Last night there was a logical leap. But there I go, leaping again. Back to the lanai. Ed likes to say it's a porch until you hit the Florida border and then it's called a lanai. It sounds normal to me now, but my son thinks it's quite strange when I refer to it that way.

Maggie on our lanai.

When I was 15 my grandmother took me to Hawaii. That was the first time I ever heard the word Lanai. Lana'i is one of the islands we hopped to over a 10 day excursion, that didn't include going to the beach at all, except when the tour bus stopped there.

My grandmother wouldn't have been caught dead in a bathing suit and I was way too self-conscious to go to the beach alone. So I am probably the only person living who went to Hawaii and never went to the beach. Be that as it may, we went to Lanai for just one day and night. It was there at the Dole plantation that we tasted pineapple, so fresh, just cut, white and dripping with juice so sweet they told us to put salt on it. Boy was that good.  That's all I remember about Lanai. We weren't there long. But I did find out more when I Googled it.

My grandmother and I get ready to leave on the plane. My little sister Becky there to see us off. Everyone dressed this way to travel back then. Gram even wore gloves! And we wore corsages!

On nearby Maui, legend has it, there lived a king named Kaka'alaneo. His son, Kaulua'au was a wild teenager and was pulling up all the breadfruit trees on the island.

Breadfruit Tree

 Because the king couldn't get his kid under control, he banished him to nearby Lana'i which was supposed to be haunted by evil spirits, ghosts and goblins.

I think he expected his son to be killed for pulling up all those breadfruit trees. Each night the king saw the prince's fire on the shore of Lana'i and after many nights he realized his son had conquered the evil spirits and chased them from the island. He forgave his son and invited him home. But his son liked it there and soon people began to move there. It is still one of the least populated islands in Hawaii, but one of the largest. Curiously, there are no breadfruit growing there now, the only island without them. I guess the prince pulled them up while he was chasing away all those evil spirits.

James Drummond Dole from Jamaica Plains, Massachusetts who moved to Hawaii in 1899 to start farming after studying agriculture at Harvard. His cousin Sanford Dole was the governor of Hawaii at the time. He decided to grow pineapples after experimenting with various native fruits.

Dole purchased the whole island of Lanai in 1922 and dedicated some 20,000 acres to growing pineapple.  It is no longer a plantation today but there is a museum there that includes his home.

The word Lana'i literally translates to "the day of conquest". Maybe it refers to Prince Kaulua'au's conquest over the evil spirits that had been inhabiting the island. I don't really know. And how it became a term for a porch I don't know either.

All I know for sure is that if the anoles had been doing their job at the driveway party or had it been a lanai party instead last Friday night, that mosquito would never have bitten my ankle,  I would never have been up in the middle of the night trying to ignore the never-ending itching by Googling anoles and lanais and you wouldn't be reading this blog!

Have a great day everyone! I am going to take a nap.
Love,

Suz

Scupper's House is Burning!

Every time Dad built a fire in the fire place, my brother and I would stare at the flames on the logs and say "Look! Scupper's house is burning!" It's an inside joke that only he and I share, my younger siblings unaware of the meaning behind it. Still today when I see a fire in a fireplace, that's what comes to mind.

Some of my earliest memories are of children's books we loved. One one of our favorite books when we were very little was about a dog named Scupper. Or so I have thought for almost 60 years now that his name was Scupper. In fact, when I Googled it, this book is all over the Internet. Perhaps it was one of your favorites too!

It was a Golden Book published in 1953, written by Margaret Wise Brown and entitled "The Sailor Dog."  During this Google session I found out that the dog's name wasn't Scupper but Scuppers. I suppose at the age of 2 or 3 toddlers might drop that last 's' when repeating it. But it's always a shock to my system when I learn that facts from my childhood are not really facts, just slightly skewed bits of information passed on by someone that we thought had to know the truth. Like when I learned that contrary to what my mother had taught me, the line in the poem is not "Home again, home again, rig-a-jig-jig". It is actually "Home again, home again, jiggity-jig." Maybe just a slight difference, but nonetheless embarrassing when you are in the midst of teaching it to your granddaughter only to be corrected mid-teach.

But I digress. The Sailor Dog starts out with this line: "Born at sea in the teeth of a gale, the sailor was a dog. Scuppers was his name." This little dog sailed the seas in a sailboat with a colorful sail that was shipwrecked at one point. He built himself a house on the shore where he landed, made of driftwood and other discarded items. At some point in the story his house must have caught on fire and thus our reference every time we saw the fire in the fireplace, crackling and mesmerizing as we sat there in our feet pajamas on the braided rug by the hearth on a cold winter's night.

Another book I just loved was called Twilight Town, written by Mary Francis Blaisdell. Does anyone remember this book? I loved to listen to my mother reading this book. It was all words, few pictures so we certainly had to use our imaginations. It was all about toys coming alive at night and for years I wanted to catch my toys in the act. The interesting thing I found out about this book is that it was written in 1913, 40 years before I ever heard it. The book my mother read from was a hard covered book, rough to the touch and musty smelling. My guess is that it had probably been my grandmother's as a child. And, unlike today, as far as I know, there were no vampires in this Twilight Town. Here is an excerpt from the Preface of the book:

 "TWILIGHT TOWN WAS IN THE PLAYROOM, BUT THE CHILDREN HAD NEVER SEEN IT. THEY HAD NEVER EVEN HEARD OF IT, BECAUSE IT WAS A SECRET. BUT THE FAIRY WITH THE GOLDEN WAND KNEW IT WAS THERE, AND SHE ALWAYS CAME AT TWILIGHT TO OPEN THE GATE AND SET THE TOYS FREE TO TALK AND PLAY TOGETHER FOR ONE LITTLE HAPPY HOUR. THEN SUCH GOOD TIMES AS THEY HAD WITH TEDDY BEAR TO LEAD THE FUN. DOLLY GAY TOOK A RIDE IN THE RED AUTOMOBILE, AND ROSABELLE WENT SAILING WITH JOLLY JACK TAR IN HIS SHIP ON THE SEA. THE LITTLE DOLLS HAD A PICNIC IN THE GREEN FOREST, AND THE TIN SOLDIERS FOUGHT A DREADFUL BATTLE."

My mother read to us from some other really old books when we were little, too. I still have her copy of "Billy Bunny and His Friends" by David Cory. This one was published in 1917 about 10 years before my mother was born. This might have been her book, but more likely it belonged to my grandmother's younger brother. Billy Bunny lived in the Brier patch with his family. He used a toadstool for an umbrella and got himself into all sorts of trouble. Some of these stories were terrible, when I look at them now. In one story all the little bunnies go to a moonlight dance and before they leave, Billy's mother tells him that if he hears her thump her hind feet, it means there's danger and he should freeze. "Everybody was having great fun when, all of a sudden, thump! thump! went some body's hind feet. Billy Bunny never moved. He "frooze" just where he was. But, oh dear me! There was one little bunny who didn't.  And down came Robber Nighthawk like a great black shadow and carried him off." Yikes. I won't be reading that to my Lily.

David Cory, author of Billy Bunny, started writing after being a stockbroker for 20 years. He wrote stories for his children and eventually published them in books. You can read an article written about him in 1917 and published in the New York Times by Clicking HERE.

When I think about it, the books we loved when we were little usually were fantasy and almost always about animals. I must keep that in mind when I choose what I will read to Lily and Owen, our littlest grandbabies. Last week on Facetime I told not-quite-three-year-old Lily we'd be going to the zoo when she comes for a visit. When I asked her what her favorite zoo animal is she didn't hesitate at all and responded "I like Unicorns." I told her that I was sorry but we didn't have any Unicorns at our zoo. "Well, how about zebras?" she asked. She seemed okay with that. I guess I better get to the book store and find something about Unicorns or zebras!

Leave your comments here or email me. I'd love to hear what some of your early books were. Have fun remembering them. I did. 

Love,
Suz

Here Comes Trouble

"Here comes Trouble" says Allen, one of the bag drop guys greeting us at the curb. There's some debate over who gave us this name, Allen or the guys in the pro shop, but it seems to have stuck. Affectionately, (I think) known as Trouble 3,  My other three buddies, Trouble 1, 2 and 4 and I don't always get to play together but when we do, it is a thing of wonder. Sandy and Sue live in my building here at Heritage Bay, and Karen lives two buildings down.

Our building on Smokehouse Bay

Starting out at home, as usual we all pile into the car, all 4 bags squashed in the trunk. Some of us, in stockinged feet haven't even put our shoes on yet, but will finish dressing while we take the two mile ride to our golf course, talking non-stop as if we hadn't seen each other in a month, when in fact we'd just all had dinner along with the husbands the night before.

Karen, Sandy and me with the husbands.

On arrival, Karen instructs the bag guys as to which bag goes in which cart, who rides with who,  and who is driving the carts. You see, she must be the driver of one of the carts. There was a time when I didn't understand why she is so adamant about that. The one time I was driving and almost threw her off the bridge may have something to do with that. I guess she doesn't think about the time she put me through the windshield, stopping short when my hat blew off. During one round last fall, the bag guys put me in the driver's seat when Karen wasn't looking. Halfway through the round, which was going just terribly for poor Karen, she told me to move over. She just HAD to drive because her golf game was suffering. I have to admit, she did play better once she was back in control.  

Trouble 2 and Trouble 1

If we have to check in at the pro-shop, in we all four swoop, descending upon the men behind the counter, laughing and talking all at once. Loudly announcing our arrival, the other customers, dour faced more serious types, in other words, 'men', are taken by surprise. It's almost always early in the morning when we go out and that's usually "man" time at the golf course. Few women are up that early. So the men who are checking in usually react in one of two ways to loud, laughing women invading their sacred territory. Either they smile timidly, stepping aside lest they be upended in our wake, or they just stare at us grumpily, wondering why they allow women on the golf course anyway.

But the guys behind the counter are used to us. They know us by name, our real names not the Trouble names, and usually are happy to see us. Although I have a feeling they might let out a sigh of relief once we head out.

Sandy and husband Ron

We get our little green bag of practice balls and head to the driving range, the real fun begins. I am sure it's not acceptable behavior, but we treat the driving range as a cross between a receiving line at a wedding and a hen party.
 "Oh, look there's Anne over there. How ya doing?"
"Isn't that Deb and her husband? That golf skirt is just a little short, don't you think?"
" Ooooh, look at her shoes! They are really cute. Wonder where she got those?"
"Why did they put the practice tees so far back this morning? How are we supposed to reach those flags out there?"
Walking up and down the line of golfers trying to warm up before their rounds, we find our spots and continue our conversations as we warm up, although we are trying to behave and not distract others.

"Oh, I forgot my driver."
"Oops, I almost killed you with that one. Sorry."
And so on. 

The other Sue hams it up for the camera at lunch one day.

All of us hit a dozen or so balls to warm up, except for the other Sue who only hits two because she doesn't like to waste her good shots at the driving range. Then we head to the putting green and the Starter. Most of the Starters know us and would be disappointed if we didn't flirt a little with them. These guys are usually really nice and have learned to hold their own with us, although any new guys are a little taken aback. I have a favorite. His name is Tom but we call him Uncle Bob because he looks like Karen's Uncle Bob. He calls us his nieces, although he might even be younger than we are. I coincidentally ran into him last summer up on Cape Cod at the Kreme and Kone where we were having our favorite fried clams. Ed took our picture and I put it on Facebook. He told people that it made him feel like a celebrity.  He really is a celebrity to us and we look for him all the time. If he knows we are out on the course, he will sometimes drive out to see how we are doing at several holes during the round, stopping to chat and giving us encouragement and a chance for some more hugs or pats on the back. He really is dear.

Me and my favorite Ranger, Uncle Bob (aka Tom)

Occasionally, a ranger who doesn't know us well might mention to us that we are first out, so please try to keep up the pace. That's when I  inform him that we are also known as the 'Fast Women of Heritage Bay!' We can play 9 holes in less than two hours and are the darlings of all the course rangers because of that reputation. Never would they dare give us a warning to "keep up with the group in front of us." But they might have to give that warning to the pokey all-male foursome teeing off behind us.

Because we spend too much time talking to the starter, we seldom have time to practice putting before they tell us it's time to go. So, off we go to the first hole, which usually isn't our best because at that hour the grass is wet and the bones are stiff. (Sandy likes to go out early so we can be home before Good Morning America is over.) That's not really true but she does get us out there before dawn sometimes. She may be the reason we are known as the Fast Women. She's by far the fastest of all of us. We might be a tad serious at the first tee at the first hole. But that's about all we can manage. After that, somebody says something like "I see your ball. It's up in those hills." And Karen and I break into "The hills are alive, with the sound of music." ♪ ♫ ♩ ♬ Or, "I think it's in the valley over there"...Down in the Valley, the Valley so low..." ♪ ♫ ♩ or  "It's in that gully over there." "HULLY GULLY, hully gully. hully gully.♪ ♫ ♩ ♬" We can think of a song for just about everything that happens on the golf course. Sometimes I think "Oh What a Beautiful Morning" should be our theme song. Although there are days when it would be more fitting to sing  "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen." 

Karen her husband Dave and Ed and I

We do manage to play some golf between giggles and songs.And we usually try to play by the rules, although some days there might be a ball actually thrown from a particularly deep bunker. In fact, once just last week I was in one of these deep traps that was way over my head. I told everyone I was below "see" level, but believe it or not, I hit it from the sand with my pitching wedge and the ball went right in the hole. That was sweet.  Unfortunately, I didn't see it happen, being below see level and all.

Sue, (Trouble 4) and her husband Vern

And we are a little generous with the gimmes sometimes. (Not sure how to spell that.) In case you don't know, if your ball is close to the hole, just to speed things up, we might tell the player it's a gimme so they don't have to finish putting. Traditionally if it's "within the leather" meaning it is as close to the hole as the distance from the bottom of the putter grip to the putter's club head it can be a gimme in a friendly round. But one of our friends accidentally mixed up the term and ever since we've been saying: "Yeah, that's a gimme. It's in the rubber." And then we laugh, and laugh...

One of the perks of golfing here in Naples is the beautiful nature we see all around us on the golf course. Karen and I like to try to identify the flora, although we aren't very good at it. If I ask Karen what some flower is she usually has some response, although I suspect she sometimes makes things up. She is notorious for never remembering people's names, so how is it she remembers the name of a plant?

Karen identifying some flora.

Sandy is quick to spot the gators that populate the water holes. Sometimes we see deer and always see beautiful birds that still seem exotic to us non-native Floridians. Karen saw a seal once, swimming by the second hole on the Oak Course. We laughed so hard we almost peed our pants when we heard that. There are no seals at the golf course. It was an otter. And Karen and I once snuck up so close to a baby alligator that we just marveled at how close it was allowing us without moving. We were really worrying that mama gator must be around somewhere, until we realized it was a baby alligator-shaped rock. That was two years ago and we still laugh whenever we go by that rock. It's still there!

Sandy staves off the gator on the 4th hole while we tee off.

Sandy is probably the most consistent of the four of us. She stays in the fairway,  putts well and is most likely to have the lowest score. She's also the best audience for any comedy routines that might crop up at any given moment. Her laugh is infectious. When I play, I am all over the place, usually one of the two longest drives is mine, but I always have the highest number of putts. I try to make more jokes than putts, but it doesn't always work out that way. Karen's a long hitter and when she is on her game, she is a force, although she has some sort of attraction to sand traps.

Karen's hole in one!

I was with Karen when she got a hole in one on a par three not long ago. That was really exciting. I've won money with her in league play a few times. Always because I am just lucky. Sue is a better player than she thinks she is but she gets unhinged whenever she has a bad shot or two and we all act as her cheerleaders, knowing exactly how she is feeling. And we usually can get her laughing before the hole is done.

Trouble 2, 3 and 4 also had fun off the course when we tapped into our artistic side. Talk about funny!

I must apologize to the serious golfers out there, the folks who are out to win and might not understand our behavior. To them the way we act might be considered blasphemy, at least against the Golf gods. There are times when we can be more serious players. If we are in a tournament or playing on league day, we generally behave ourselves and might reign it in a little, albeit very difficult. And there are days when the game itself is very frustrating. But when the four of us are together out there, we have no control over our behavior. Something takes over and we are just incapable of passing up the chance to laugh. We do get serious when we are actually hitting the ball, but between strokes, there ain't no way! And, there are even days when we just can't hit anything the way we want to and we just want to quit. At those times the pat phrase is "It's just a game." But you know what? When the four of us play, it's so much more than that!

Have a great day, and lots of laughs!
Love,

Red Underpants and Grapes, or How Will YOU Spend New Year's Eve?

It's almost New Year's Eve and four other couples and Ed and I plan to go to the fireworks on the beach at 7:30 followed by dinner at a nice restaurant at 9:00, then back to the house for dessert at our house and a Yankee Swap, something to keep us up until the champagne toast at midnight. On any given night here in Naples, we usually have seen a movie, had cocktails at happy hour and dinner at a restaurant, and still gotten home in time for Jeopardy. So, it will be a long night for us, but I am confident if I have a nap, I can stay up to welcome in the New Year.

As an adult, it hasn't ever been a big deal, celebrating New Year's.  Once in a while I'd go to a party, but more often than not, I haven't wanted to be out on the roads that particular night. It was more fun as a kid when my parents hosted the party. They could be very entertaining with their hats and horns and kissing everyone. Everyone was always so "happy"!

New Year's Eve always seemed to mean a lot to my parents. Besides the parties, my mother would talk about how it was important that peas be eaten on New Year's for good luck. Yet I don't remember her actually serving peas on that day in particular. In fact, usually we had left overs or Dad would get pizza, since that day was pretty low key after the previous night's revelry. I didn't like peas, still don't.

I did a little research and it seems 'round' foods from peas to pomegranates are preferred at New Year's Eve celebrations worldwide.

The first time I remember hearing anything about New Year's celebrations anywhere besides home was in my Freshman Spanish class when we learned that many Spanish speaking countries, including Spain and Mexico, have the tradition of eating a grape with every chime of the clock at midnight. Everyone must look like chipmunks by the time the twelfth grape is stuffed in their mouths. I guess kissing at midnight isn't part of their tradition. But round food is.

Kissing at midnight is a widely practiced tradition all over the world on New Year's Eve. In some countries whoever you kiss at midnight is the one you'll spend the following year with. I remember at 19 going to a party and kissing a boy named Pike Bartlett. We were old friends from church and had known each other forever. He was on crutches and I don't know why I remember that. But we were in Sue MacKinnon's family room and when midnight came, everybody around us was making out, and he and I had nothing else to do. I don't think we ever  dated before or after. I guess 'that's what friends are for'. ♫ ♬ ♪ ♩ ♪. I just threw that in because I don't remember ever kissing anyone else on New Year's Eve to whom I was not married or related. 

In South American countries, if you wear yellow underpants on New Year's eve, money will come your way. If you wear red underpants, you will attract love. I guess that New Year's Eve when I kissed Pike I must not have been wearing red ones. In the Philippines it is good luck to wear polka-dots on New Years Eve while eating their round fruits. I don't think the polka-dots have to be on your underpants, however.

The clinking of glasses after a toast actually originated back when people were paranoid about being poisoned. Pouring a little of your drink into mine, and viceversa, to prove that your drink was safe was replaced with the symbolic clink. 

Almost everywhere noise is made at midnight to scare away bad luck from invading the New Year.  Fireworks, noisemakers and banging on pots are popular ways to do this. In fact, in Italy, they throw old pots and pans out the windows. So be careful if you are in Rome on New Year's Eve.

Auld Lang Syne is a Scottish air we adopted here in the states when Canadian Guy Lombardo and his band played it each year. Believe it or not, it's only been a tradition here since 1929. The song was written 225 years ago in Scotland. When the Scots sing it, they form a circle and everybody crosses their arms and holds the hands of the people next to them. At the end of the song,  everyone rushes into the center while still holding hands, then, they all back up again and everyone turns under the arms to end up facing outwards with hands still joined.

I haven't had anything to drink and I can't figure out how that works. Just imagine a bunch of celebrating Scotsmen/Scotswomen trying to do that.

Then on New Year's Day the Scottish tradition says that the first visitor to enter the home after midnight will determine how your new year will go. If it is a young, dark haired man with gifts, who first steps into your home, he brings good luck. If it is a woman, it is bad luck. Hmmm...It's called "First-Footing" or Hogmany to a Scotsman. Just a wee li'l bit o' Scottish trivia fer ye.

In Wales, at the first stroke of midnight, they rush to the back door and open it, then close it again, letting all the old year's "bad stuff" leave. Then at the last stroke of the clock, they rush up and open the front door, welcoming in the New Year and all it's good luck. 

In Denmark, everyone stands up on a chair just before midnight with a drink in one hand and a piece of cake and a coin in the other. Those items assure that they will have drink, food and money in the new year. They jump off the chairs at midnight. I am glad I won't have people standing on my furniture.  I don't think I'd like that at all.

I like the way the Japanese celebrate their New Year's. They clean their houses to clean out the old and welcome the new. They end grudges and forgive misunderstandings. At Buddhist temples they strike the gong 108 times to get rid of the 108 types of human weaknesses. Only 108? Whaaat?

In China, they apply a fresh coat of red paint to their front doors and put all their knives away for 24 hours lest anyone cuts themselves, thus cutting the family's good luck for the New Year.

New Year's resolutions were started by the Babylonians. Farmers would start their lives over each year by returning borrowed tools and paying their debts. I don't think they ever vowed to lose weight, in ancient Babylon, though. 

But one of the most touching New Year's Eve traditions I know of was something my Dad used to do. Every year, after kissing his wife and twirling the noisemakers, he'd stop everything for a minute to call his mother. If the party wasn't at our house, we would be staying over night at Gram's. Sometimes I'd hear the conversation from his side, and sometimes from hers. I don't know if the tradition began after my grandfather died or if it was something from his childhood. I must remember to ask him.

Gram and Dad hamming it up in the 30s.

It was just a moment on the phone, saying nothing more than "Happy New Year!" between mother and son. She expected the call and usually headed to the phone as soon as she had seen the ball drop on TV. A Manhattan girl, she wouldn't miss that Time Square scene for anything and Dad knew she'd be awake.

I can still picture her in her long silk robe, tied at the waist, house slippers scuffing over the linoleum floor to the phone that hung on the kitchen wall. She'd pick it up on the first ring, her hands shaking as they always did no matter what, and instead of hello, "Happy New Year, Dear!" she'd say, smiling.  A pause while she listened and then a simple "You, too. Goodnight, Dear." I can hear her voice like it was just yesterday. Not much else was said. She'd hang up the phone and say to us, "Everyone off to bed now." And up we'd all go.

I wonder if my sons will be reading this blog? 

Have a Happy, Healthy and Prosperous New Year, everyone!

Love,
Suz