Gotta Love Kitty Thesbians

REAL YouTube

"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"

"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."

"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.

"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."

"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"

"It doesn't happen all at once," said the Skin Horse. "You become. It takes a long time. That's why it doesn't happen often to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept. Generally, by the time you are Real, most of your hair has been loved off, and your eyes drop out and you get loose in the joints and very shabby. But these things don't matter at all, because once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand." - Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams

Finally, something really amazing got featured, good job YouTube staff! This beautiful-n-bittersweet video by Chris166 does a pretty good job at explaining YouTube's worldwide popularity.

YouTube is, quite simply, a home for a bunch of sad, lonely, weird, happy, young, old, confused, bitter, angry, creative, bored people who are trying to connect with each other and feel like they are a part of something...anything, as long as it feels real...

"Give me my Bunny!" he said. "You mustn't say that. He isn't a toy. He's REAL!"

When the little Rabbit heard that he was happy, for he knew that what the Skin Horse had said was true at last. The nursery magic had happened to him, and he was a toy no longer. He was Real. The Boy himself had said it.

That night he was almost too happy to sleep, and so much love stirred in his little sawdust heart that it almost burst. And into his boot-button eyes, that had long ago lost their polish, there came a look of wisdom and beauty, so that even Nana noticed it next morning when she picked him up, and said, "I declare if that old Bunny hasn't got quite a knowing expression!" - Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams

You would think that, in this world of cells, email, IMing and texting, connecting with people would not be such a problem - it is easier than ever before, right? Apparently, real connections are hard to find, despite our easy access to one another. All over the world, people are reaching out and trying to connect with each other in some human way, and in doing so, just like the Velveteen Rabbit, they feel themselves becoming real.

The strange rabbit stopped dancing, and came quite close. He came so close this time that his long whiskers brushed the Velveteen Rabbit's ear, and then he wrinkled his nose suddenly and flattened his ears and jumped backwards.

"He doesn't smell right!" he exclaimed. "He isn't a rabbit at all! He isn't real!"

"I am Real!" said the little Rabbit. "I am Real! The Boy said so!" And he nearly began to cry.

Just then there was a sound of footsteps, and the Boy ran past near them, and with a stamp of feet and a flash of white tails the two strange rabbits disappeared.

"Come back and play with me!" called the little Rabbit. "Oh, do come back! I know I am Real!" - Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams

Touching and sweet, this video makes me feel a bit better about the world. It isn't just me who yearns for this realness and this closeness, it is a need felt in every kid's bedroom, adult's living room and computer rooms across the world by every person who wants to be less of a toy and more of a real rabbit.

YouTube is still navigating how to stay real as they begin to make deals with large corporate entities and start to sell stuff. But the YouTube celebs/watch dogs do their best to call the bullshit when they smell it (I am talking to you Paris Hilton and Diddy, yes, your shit stinks). Still, it remains to be seen if this realness can last or if it will adapt into a new form.

Whether the creators of YouTube intended to be this meeting place that brings people to life or not, good on ya YouTube, also known as the nursery magic Fairy...

"Little Rabbit," she said, "don't you know who I am?"

The Rabbit looked up at her, and it seemed to him that he had seen her face before, but he couldn't think where.

"I am the nursery magic Fairy," she said. "I take care of all the playthings that the children have loved. When they are old and worn out and the children don't need them any more, then I come and take them away with me and turn them into Real."

"Wasn't I Real before?" asked the little Rabbit.

"You were Real to the Boy," the Fairy said, "because he loved you. Now you shall be Real to every one." - Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams

Final Goodbye

To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish'd. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Hamlet

What is it about death that weighs so heavily upon us still breathing mortals? Why do we cling so damn tightly to this mortal coil when it is bound to bounce free from all of us in the end? Thoughts like these cluttered my head and kept me up late tossing and turning as the trucks swept past on the highway outside my hotel window.

The morning of my grandma's funeral, I woke up early and hit up Burger King for a grease soaked, high in saturated fat breakfast for under $5. How can anyone drink that much coffee? A small is the size of a small child!? I did my best not to splatter my fancy black mourning clothes with grease or watered down coffee.

Even though I visit out here a lot, each time I get reminded of the differences once you hit the middle of the country. When you are in the Mid-West you can kiss goodbye to milk in your coffee (it comes powdered), American Spirits ("American what? I ain't never seen those before..."), fresh vegetables (go figure, there are farms every which way you turn but they prefer veggies from cans) and any lettuce except for iceberg.

It is a 20 minute drive from Manchester to Strawberry Point and the road was desolate and empty. A thick mist hung over the flat fields and rain smattered the windshield. This dark and dismal weather was the perfect backdrop for a funeral. I indulged my love of smultz with some melodramatic Coldplay.

Driving through the small town of Strawberry Point always brings back a flood of memories of my grandparents and my childhood. I've been taking trips to this little Iowan town since I was a little girl to visit Jakob and Bertha Marguerite.

Driving down the main street I passed the simple white house they spent most of their lives in, then the old age apartments they inhabited once they sold the house, next came the garage my grandfather ran, and then, after passing the strawberry landmark and after driving through the 4-corner stop sign in the center of town, there is the nursing home where granny spent her last days. It is hard to imagine spending most of your life living on one small street.

Once I passed these landmarks, Strawberry Point was already close to done (it takes all of 5 minutes to drive through this little town) and the speed limit increased. 4.5 miles outside of town, I made a left down a hidden dirt road toward the historic landmark of St Sebald Lutheran Church. My grandfather's memorial was in this same church 6 years ago but, much to my regret now, I didn't go.

The dirt road to St Sebald is long and twisted and I wasn't sure if my rental car would be able to make it up the hills and navigate around the impressive potholes. The rain continued to fall and the road was a mess of puddles and ruts. Mist coated the hills and dales making the landscape look mysterious and European. Was this still Iowa or had I entered a worm hole and been transported to Scotland?!

After 4 miles on the treacherous dirt road, the church finally peeked out its pointed white head. Outside was a gray hearse patiently waiting. I did my best to avoid the muddy ruts and kept myself from getting soaked on my way into the church. Inside, my father was greeting all the old timers that used to visit my grandpa at his garage. My stepmother was cradling one of her 4 grandkids. Past the well wishers were 30 or more gray haired heads seated in a small, cozy church with bright red carpets. Off to the side, there was my grandmother.

A dead body should look dead, right? But when Tom Roberson of Roberson's Funeral Home was done with her, granny looked alive. Although she was lying on her back with her eyes closed, I was positive she was going to open up her eyes and wink at me, or shuffle her hands together nervously. It didn't seem possible that she could be dead, so alive and pink was her skin. I felt guilty staring at her, like I was being rude and watching a resting person.

I've always loved grandma's hands. They have this strange shape, sort of like a lobster claw. They are thicker in the middle and taper at the end, her fingers are thick and gnarled. She was lucky to have all her digits. My grandfather's older brother Fritz, the farmer who inherited the Swiss family homestead (thus necessitating grandpa's move to America) was lacking more than one of his digits thanks to farm accidents. Granny used to shuffle her hands nervously, they were the most active part of her body in her older days.

I tried to imagine all the things her hands had once done: the many pies her hands created; all the times they dug into the earth and planted a bulb, ripped up a weed, made breathing room for a bed of roses; the letters those hands often wrote me; the dinners they created; the clothes they sewed; the hats they knit; the quilts they sewed; and the handkerchiefs they embroidered. Those hands had created so many special things and now those hands lay immobile, itching to apply themselves to a new project.

The church was cold and they closed up grandma's casket and wheeled her to the front of the room. A large painting of a smiling Jesus with open arms loomed above us. Most of the mourners sat on the left side of the chapel. Marla joked that is what Mid-Westerners do, clump together for safety. We sat on the right side to even it out a bit. My big, silent, emotionally contained father sniffled quietly to himself. Marla's grandson gurgled.

Pastor Lin Reichstadter was an impressively dramatic show woman and she staged the service beautifully. The small church had a crackly PA system and Pastor Lin began by reading a prayer from the back of the church, her voice echoing from the speakers. Then she dramatically made her way to the front of the church to begin the memorial. She began on the left and then made her way to the right where the Christ painting loomed above her. She performed her grand finale standing next to my grandmother's casket and lifting her hand in the air as though to call all that was holy toward my granny as she spoke the words of the gospel.

Marla had enlisted her relatives to help carry the casket which was lucky as most of the people who knew grandma were a little old to be carrying such a heavy weight. They motioned for us to follow as the casket made its way down the center aisle of the church. I smiled at the wrinkled old faces dabbing their eyes and watching our procession. As the pallbearers navigated the casket down the stairs, I thought about the humor of it all. As heavy and dramatic as death is, you still have to figure out a way to wheel the casket down the stairs. Watching the rickety old wheels slowly creaking down the runners somehow grounded me.

We ate sandwiches, coffee and cake in the warm church basement. Many sweet withered faces wrapped me up in hugs and told me about their relationship with my grandparents. Alice and Alma Hanson grew up down the road from grandma and walked to school with her every morning. Rose and her husband still live down the road from her old house and also went to school with her. So many faces and names and memories. I asked Rose if my grandmother had been a happy person. She smiled wistfully and said, "As happy as anyone."

It must be such a strange process, getting old and watching all your friends drop off around you, one by one. Knowing that you are next but not knowing when exactly your number will be called. There is a certain inevitability in it all. No wonder these wrinkled arms and hands felt so strong and supportive to me, they have been through so much and are ready for what comes next.

The drive to the cemetery was an arduous but strangely calming journey. Dad took us the long way and most of it was over bumpy dirt roads through empty unclaimed countryside. Unlike the rest of Iowa, this land is full of sloping hills and valleys. Dad says it is called the "driftless area" because the glaciers, when they flattened the rest of the state, missed this one spot. And I am sure my great grandparents who came here from the distant Swiss lands of tall mountains, felt at home here in these driftless valleys.

My grandfather is buried in this cemetery as are my great grandparents (grandma's parents Louise and Fritz). The graveyard is right down the road from where my grandmother grew up. We passed her house and continued on along the very same road that she walked every morning on her way to school, through snow, sleet and rain, she walked those 3 miles every day without fail. Her house is no longer standing and the one room school house has been torn down but the cemetery remains. We listened to Peter Gabriel's The Passion and glumly watched the mist-covered landscape whisk by.

The service at the graveyard was a quick one. We stood in the harsh wind and listened to Lin say another prayer. The old women's rain hats flapped around wildly and grandma's casket stood ominously waiting to be lowered into its final resting place. I gazed out over the vast green that stretched on for miles in each direction and I felt happy knowing that this is where Grandma would spend the remainder of her days. I suppose in the end, it is all any of us can really do. Live the best life that we can and end it with as many people who are near and dear to us that we can. And for that, I was so glad to be there to share it with them all and say my final goodbyes.

I love you Bertha Marguerite Dennler Sollberger and I am glad for the little bit of time that I knew you. May your journeys be spacious and your reveries grand. I will always be on the look out for you playing your little tricks and jauntily traipsing along those old country driftless roads.

Postcards from the Heartland

To prepare for the trip out to Iowa, I needed some damn hot pants (no, it is not logical, I just did) so I splurged on some ultra chic and expensive Echo jeans. Against my better judgment, I walked away with a pair of dark blue skinny jeans (which look more like leggings than denim) and some "Ava" Citizens of Humanity low riders - how could I resist?

Granted, they were ridiculously expensive but I think Abbie is right that the fancy jeans just fit better. What can I say, when faced with the prospect of seeing my grandmother's corpse face to face, I needed to pep myself up with gluttonous purchasing.

5AM is an ungodly time to wake up but the cheapest ticket I could get to Iowa required it so, 5AM it was. The morning was wet, rainy and it was pitch black outside when we drove to the airport. I haven't flown in a year or so and it is a bigger pain in the ass than ever before. I am not sure what the logic is behind the plastic bag requirement but they now force you to place all your 3 oz liquids and gels (anything bigger goes in the trash, I kid you not) in a zip lock plastic bag.

I got busted trying to sneak a 3.35 oz bottle of hair gel past 'em and they insisted I throw it out. Instead, I sweet talked a sympathetic woman working at the airport to keep some of my over-sized toiletries until I return this weekend but I mean, come on, what a silly rule.

Next they make you take off your shoes, belt, jacket, scarf and sweater until you are basically naked. They searched my purse by hand to pull out two vials of liquid lip gloss. These glosses had to go in the plastic bag in order to be allowed on the plane. How the hell does a plastic bag make liquids somehow safe?

I suppose the minor aggravations/humiliations are worth it if it means the plane won't blow up mid-journey but I sometimes wonder if these airport screeners get sadistic pleasure in making passengers strip down to their skivvies. The lady checking my ID muttered, "Dumb ass" as a hippie girl left the line to go and purchase one of the precious plastic bags from the newsstand. Two minutes later, I had to go buy one and I swear I heard a faint, "Dumb ass."

Once you are in the air, it is impossible not to get excited by the feeling of movement. As we happily drifted through puffy, white clouds, I dozed on and off for most of the flight. The sensation of landing is so addictive, as the plane breaks it feels like your body wants to keep on flying forward, and if it weren't for the seatbelt holding you in place, you just might be able to get enough speed to be airborn, for a brief instant before you splatted into the pavement. One more flight later, I arrived in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. It is a small town airport and easy to navigate.

It is funny. Once you hit the Midwest, people start looking different: longer lines at McDonalds, bigger waistlines, larger hair, more bejeweled sweaters and impressive beehives. The cultural differences between the Oakland and Cedar Rapids airports used to throw me into quite a tizzy. Going from urban to country is like jumping into a cold plunge after soaking in a hot tub - a bit surprising but sort of refreshing too.

People tend to be very friendly here as well. They go out of their way to help out strangers and out-of-towners like me. Everyone in these little towns knows each other and they stop in to visit each other and chat; babies are cooed over, husbands are discussed, children's new cars are decided upon and neighbors are analyzed. There is not much else to do in a town with one main street and two bars, one of which is called, I kid you not, "Beavers."

Midwesterners are alternately viewed as open, friendly, and straightforward, or sometimes stereotyped as unsophisticated and stubborn. Factors that probably affected the shaping of Midwest values include the religious heritage of the abolitionist, pro-education Congregationalists to the stalwart Calvinist heritage of the Midwestern Protestants, as well as the agricultural values inculcated by the hardy pioneers who settled the area. The Midwest remains a melting pot of Protestantism and Calvinism, mistrustful of authority and power. - Wikipedia

Once I hit the road in my rental wheels, it all felt familiar to me again. I remembered all the times I had driven out of this airport to go see grandma in her nursing home. It took so many hours of plane and car travel to get to her that it always felt like some sort of a quest and the prize at the end was my funny granny, her cryptic remarks and her happy exclamations about the goings on outside her window.

The flat Iowan landscape is composed of about two colors these days: yellow and blue. For far and wide are miles and miles of yellow husks of dead corn standing up to attention and above them a pale blue sky stretching on forever.

I have a fond spot in my heart for Iowa. Maybe it is because this is where my immigrant grandparents spent the bulk of their lives and eventually grew old and died, or it could be the fact that my father grew up here, but it is also beautiful countryside that speaks to my love of empty open spaces. Either way, driving along these empty, corn-lined roads feels strangely therapeutic.

As with most of my trips to Iowa, I blasted the Brit pop, Oasis and Blur. The disparate natures of the barren Midwestern landscape and the syrupy richness of British pop is too tasty. Add in some whispery, bittersweet Elliott Smith and some cigarettes and it can't get much better.

Tomorrow morning my grandmother is being remembered in a small church down a long, dirt road outside of Strawberry Point. I have never seen a dead body in the flesh and it will be particularly strange to see the empty husk of someone I once knew lying still in a coffin. I wonder if it will be like the funerals in Six Feet Under? Will there be drama and intrigue? Sex in the church closet? Naw, this is Iowa, not LA.

Some of my grandmother's childhood friends will be there to send her off proper. My father and I will be her only actual family members in attendance. Most of our clan are back in Switzerland and unable to make the journey. I am glad to be here to say my final goodbyes. Glad to take this time to remember her, not as she is now, but as she once was, young and impish, tricking her neighbors with a glass that dribbled and scampering around the backroads of Iowa, leaving her mark in people like me.

To Iowa

I'm headed out to Iowa to see my Grandmother Margaret put to rest. The ceremony will be in a small church in the small town she spent most of her life in. A lot of her friends from the old days will be there and I hope to hear lots of stories about my Swiss German grandparents who made America their home.

After the ceremony, we'll drive into the vast Iowan countryside, down many deserted dirt roads, to bury Margaret at the grave that has been waiting for her for years now. She'll be put into the ground next to my grandfather and many of their family and friends will be their neighbors underground.

It is too bad that they can't be buried together in the perfectly manicured graveyard in the little Swiss town where more of their families are buried but I suppose America became a big part of their lives in the end, so this is as fitting a resting place as any.

You can see where the little one room school house used to be from the vantage point of the hillside graveyard. It is surrounded by unpopulated, open countryside for miles and miles. It's a simple, small country cemetery, no more than 100 gravestones, home to a generation which is almost all gone.

A while ago, when granny was more mobile, my father and I drove her out to the cemetery to visit her husband's grave. It was hard to get her out of the car and over the uneven ground to stand next to his marker. Her name had already been carved on the gravestone and her death date was left blank.

For some people this sight would be chilling to look at but Margaret, with her usual carefree pinache, just chuckled to herself and didn't say much. It must be strange looking at the site of your grave but granny was never one for sentiment. Glad I can go out and see her one last time and hopefully catch some glimpse of the Margaret that once was prancing to school with a heart full of hope and excitement for what lay ahead.

Remembering Elliott

Three years ago on October 21st, musician Elliott Smith committed suicide by stabbing himself in the chest. He was just 34 years old and it is so sad to think of all the music he could have made if he had lived longer.

Below is a video of the random objects and notes left by mourners at his memorial wall in LA (the one he is standing next to above). One of the comments says, "Your biggest mistake was thinking you could relate." Ouch. Well Elliott, you did the best that you could which is all anyone can really do and you suceeded in relating to thousands of damaged people, for whatever solace that is worth.

Elliott Smith 1969-2003 RIP

Stormy Sea

"Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean. Tears from the depth of some divine despair Rise in the heart and gather to the eyes, In looking on the happy autumn-fields, And thinking of the days that are no more." Alfred, Lord Tennyson

The thing about sadness is that it keeps hitting you, in garganuan waves, just when you thought it was through with you. And then the whole cumbersome process starts again, the desperate gulps for air, the sinking sense that nothing will ever feel good again and the echoing emptiness.

“The word 'happiness' would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness.”
-Carl Gustav Jung

There are lucid moments when you feel like everything is fine, when you can almost enjoy the fall leaves and the hot mulled cider and then, blammo, you go under again. You want to crawl out from underneath it but it just keeps dragging you back down.

“It's easy to cry when you realize that everyone you love will reject you or die.” - Chuck Palahniuk

“You cannot prevent the birds of sadness from passing over your head, but you can prevent their making a nest in your hair” - Chinese Proverbs

Then you get bored with yourself and bored of the melodrama. Ready for something, anything, to get you back on track. You try to eat something, fuel yourself for the next day but it is impossible to escape the doom and the gloom that makes food taste like sawdust. The slow, inevitable passage of time weighs heavy, dampening any happy thoughts that try to break through the darkness.

“One cannot be deeply responsive to the world without being saddened very often.”
- Erich Fromm

“Change is certain. Peace is followed by disturbances; departure of evil men by their return. Such recurrences should not constitute occasions for sadness but realities for awareness, so that one may be happy in the interim.”
Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792-1822)

Ultimately though, there are not many options besides going forward, picking yourself up, dusting yourself off and stepping back into the stream of things. But sometimes you need a lot of time to get over the sadness, so you make yourself limp and let it sweep your rag doll body down to the depths of its ocean bottom over and over again.

“The mind that is wise mourns less for what age takes away; than what it leaves behind.” William Wordsworth

“I hold it true, whatever befall; I feel it, when I sorrow most; 'tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.” Alfred, Lord Tennyson

Where there is sorrow, there is holy ground. - Oscar Wilde

SADNESS

Emotion. An unpleasant visceral feeling of sorrow, unhappiness, depression, or gloom.

Usage: Sadness shows a. in bowing postures of the body wall; b. in the cry face and lip-pout; c. in gazing-down; d. in a slumped (i.e., flexed-forward) posture of the shoulders; and e. in the audible sigh.

RESEARCH REPORTS: 1. Signs of sadness include drooping eyelids; flaccid muscles; hanging head; contracted chest; lowered lips, cheeks, and jaw ("all sink downwards from their own weight"); downward-drawn mouth corners; raised inner-ends of the eyebrows (i.e., contraction of "grief muscles"); and remaining motionless and passive (Darwin 1872:176-77). 2. Sadness shows most clearly in the eye area (Ekman, Friesen, and Tomkins 1971).

Evolution. Sadness is a mammalian feeling which stems from a. grief associated with maternal-infant separation, and b. defeat inflicted in fighting.

Anatomy. In acute sadness, muscles of the throat constrict, salivary glands release a viscous fluid, repeated swallowing occurs, the eyes close tightly, and the lacrimal glands release tears. Facial signs include a. frowning eyebrows (corrugator supercilii, occipitofrontalis, and orbicularis oculi muscles contract); b. frowning mouth (depressor anguli oris); c. pouted or compressed lips (orbicularis oris); and d. depression and eversion of the lower lip (depressor labii inferioris)--as the facial features constrict as if to seal-off contact with the outside world.

Goodnight Granny

Well, it would seem that the old adage rings true this week. When it rains, it truly does pour, buckets and buckets and rain barrels too. This weekend my last remaining grandparent died.

Grandma Margaret almost lived to be 95 yrs old, she was less than one month away. Like my grandfather who missed his 90th birthday by a nose, Maggie had to do things her way, even at the end.

I haven't seen grandma in more than 2 years but there was a time when I made it my business to call her every week and visit yearly. Our conversations consisted of me yelling very loud questions and her rambling from memory to memory.

In her later years, time began to bleed together and she referred to her dead parents and husband in the present tense. She told me about her mother's 200 varieties of violets, her trips through the snow in her father's sleigh, the tricks she played on visitors as a girl, her various farming chores and her long walks in the cold, winter months through the desolate Iowan countryside to her one room schoolhouse (see video here).

And through all her tales were the charmingly negative comments which I like to refer to as Grandma Speak (see video here):

"Well, we did the best that we could and that's all we could do."

"Well, that's the way it goes, ain't nothing you could do about it."

"Oh well, that's the way the world works."

But despite her amazing capacity to find the wrong in all that was right (which I must admit to finding very amusing), she was a happy person in her later years. She spent her last days in the dementia ward of the local nursing home. She smiled, giggled and was generally pleasant to everyone.

The last time I saw grandmother, we had a nice visit, or so I thought. I made a special detour just to see her while driving across the country from California to Vermont to relocate. After being sweet as pie to me during our short time together, I overheard her complaining to one of the other residents about me: "I don't know who that girl is or what she is doing here! She's taking lots of pictures!" Indeed! How could you not love your dear ol' backstabbing, slightly demented granny?!

In an earlier blog post, I talked about her photographic artistic leanings which, as they were for many women of her generation, channeled into all the traditional female arts like pie making, cleaning, clothes making, gardening and cooking. It's nice to imagine what her life would have been if she had other options. In a way, I feel like my weird modern life, strange though it may be, is an expression of what could have been, for her.

I have notebooks upon notebooks filled with her carefully transcribed recipes for pies, pot roasts and jello surprises and detailed instructions for handmade clothes for her husband and only son. These books are like diaries for me and I often scour them for clues about what she was thinking or feeling while she was recording the way to make the perfect rasberry jam.

The only paying job that grandma ever had was as a seamstress when she was a young girl, before she met her husband. I have some of her delicate hankerchiefs from this time and her stitches are smaller than a flea, so delicate and perfect and uniformly sewn - as though a machine was holding the needle. Her quilts are colorful and imaginative - bright, modern patterns that must have seemed jarring when compared to the average young girl's quilts. These meager remnants are my road map to my grandmother: closed-off, bumpy and clouded in mystery but well worth the trip.

If I can swing it, I'll be heading out to Iowa this weekend for her funeral. It will be nice to sit with her old friends, providing they are mobile enough to attend, and talk about the good old days. Perhaps I can take a drive out to her childhood home which is not much more than a shell these days. And maybe, if I am lucky, I'll catch a glimpse of her out of the corner of my eye, herding the cows and stearing clear of that pesky rooster that made her life so much more fun.

Love you grandma, this montage is for you, cause baby, it is a wild world, I know how much you knew that to be true: