happily ever after.

I have been busy working on a Memory Book for an 85th birthday. The recipient, Hulda, is sweet and dear, and I love her to pieces. Having mentioned that she is turning 85, I should also mention that she lives in southern Florida, drives herself everywhere, and refuses to wear a hearing aid.... Why bother with that when you can have the television so loud even I can hear it here in Atlanta? QVC is her favorite channel (where all your Hanukkah gifts come from) and she has more clothes and handbags than you can shake a stick at; all purchased with a coupon.

Hulda is one of my favorite people on Planet Earth. Landon was recently blessed enough to settle in her arms here at work. I think the boy can sniff a Grandma out in a crowd.

So her sweet daughter in law (my boss) is sending her a little gift for her birthday... having sorted through hundreds of pictures to find only a handful to sum up Hil's (as we call her) life in pictures...



I hope I am blessed enough, at 85, to know the things Hil has known... to have held the grandbabies she has held, and to have been loved as much as she was. I hope my children grow up to think of me as wonderfully as her children think of her - and that they too love me enough to let me go without a hearing aid, just because I don't like the way they make my hair look. Seriously. Who cares if I accidentally think my son-in-law just died of a heart attack because I wasn't wearing them? Jesus. That sentence doesn't even do that whole story justice.



One day, when I am 85, I want to be cruising around the Mexican Riviera with my grown children... having asked them because they are the people I most want to spend every second with. I hope to be able to call my grandson and tell him I'm sending him the certificates I have for some kind of stock something or other with some company called AT&T. I hope to be wearing fabulous clothes and sunning myself on my patio.

Her pictures have taught me much about my life this week... where I am going, where I hope to end up, and how I want to live everyday for the rest of my eighty five years. Without worry and without regret. With the person who loved me the most beside me, and my children holding my hands the entire way. With a family.
Because, despite the heartache, the tragedies, and the mistakes, Hil has lived a life full of one thing for certain... love. I gotta find the same thing. No more wasting time. And I am certain that Hil would tell me, if I called her today, expressing my woes, to get my sweet ass in gear.... that is of course, if she could hear me over the television.