If a picture is worth a thousand words...

Then this post will be worth two pictures.  I don't have many pictures today.

We got the baby quilt delivered last week.  And, we got to spend sometime visiting with the neighbors.  They're new and we haven't spent a lot of time with them. While they didn't know much about quilts, the mom-to-be recognized that it was homemade quickly, and she had an appreciation for that.  

My boss got a new job with the company and his move date will be in a few weeks, so I'll have a new boss soon enough.  A new person to get used to.  Someone else to learn to trust.  But, it's okay.  My 37th anniversary with the company was last Saturday and I can confidently say that in that time, I've probably worked for 40 or so managers.  Some good.  Some not so good.  Some dumb as a rock and some that were brilliant leaders.  It won't take me long to bend a new one to my will.  😆

Just kidding.  Sort of.

People I know at the company are retiring left and right and that's creating a lot of opportunities for younger folks with fresh ideas and thoughts...some good.  Some not so much.  

Fun times ahead.  

I just got back from visiting my family in north Louisiana.  It's unbelievable how different I am than them.  Nearly 40 years in a bigger city have made me more liberal and accepting of the flaws of others.  Most of the time, I kept my thoughts to myself.  But, there were a couple times when I had to stop a conversation because I found it objectionable.  No regrets.  

We ate and we visited and we ate and we visited and we did that over and over,  I heard new stories about my Dad's childhood and a few about my Mom's.  I love those stories and try to remember them.  I hope I can remember the story of my Grandfather bringing home a bicycle and how my Dad and his brother shared it.  How that could have caused trouble between them, but instead taught them a new lesson on sharing, with one peddling and one riding on the back.  This is them, with my Grandmother, I'm going to guess about 1942.  

My Mom sent home a box of new pictures, but I haven't had a chance to get through them all.  There are going to be some more gems like that one there.  So that he doesn't feel left out, this is my Dad with his Father, a few years earlier.  I can almost always pick my Dad out of a childhood pic.  I still see this little baby's face in his face, 86 years later.  

My Dad and Uncle are in the middle of this group, taken at Easter.   I don't know who the other boys are and forgot to ask.  

My Dad talked about how they didn't have anything to speak of, but during the depression, they didn't go hungry and they always had shoes, and about how my Grandfather worked 7 days a week, five in construction and the weekend, at the family farm, working in the vegetable garden, raising food that was shared by many of my Great-Grandparent's children and families.  And, he talked about my two Uncles that were on Normandy beach in WWII and how it changed them for the rest of their lives and how one found a good wife who must have helped him deal with it because he went on to have a family and how one never recovered and had PTSD all the rest of his life.  I'd heard the stories before, but you know how family stories are...each time they're told, there are additional details and they're repeated from different perspectives, focusing on one person or another.  I hope that one day, Syd tells good stories about me and doesn't just focus on how restrictive I was as a parent.  

It was good to get to see them all.  My Sister's freezer went out and they invited all the family over to eat what had thawed, but hadn't gone bad yet.  I have no idea how much they cooked that night, I know that 9 adults and one child only ate part of it.  I'm sure they're going to be eating and sharing the rest of it for a few days.  

I'm just going to put this out there...7 hours in the car is not as easy as it used to be.  Thank goodness I had a good book to listen to.  But my back, knees and hips need two aleve today.  And, you can bet I'll be taking more than one walk around the neighborhood to get all those parts back to normal functioning.  When I got back to Austin, this is what I drove into.  Fortunately, I managed to skirt around it until a couple miles from the house, when it came down in buckets.  I went in the house and played with the dogs and left everything in the car until it had passed.  There was lightening all over in that storm as I got closer and closer.  

Of course, there are obligatory flower pictures.  It's spring and I hope you've come to expect that.  

This is the last Iris to bloom.  It's a little late, but welcome.  This is one I put in a pot to give away, but I kept it for Rob to use in the front beds and then it put up a bloom stalk.    

This is an Africanized Iris.  There will only be a few blooms this year.  Both these Iris froze to the ground in that late hard freeze we had and they've been slow to recover.  

Another green daylily that looks greener than the last bloom that I showed from this plant.  It turns out that my Dad doesn't have one of these anymore, but he was glad that we still had some.  My Mom sent home three new daylilies with me this time and a couple other plants that I'll be getting ready to put in the yard this weekend.  

That's it for me today.  Extended family and stories and flowers were what made up my last week.  There was happy and there was sad and there was silly and there was mad, and all of that is what family is made up of.  These are the people that have known me all my life.  They've nurtured me and influenced me and frustrated me.  But, even as we grow older, there's a bond that I don't want to break over things as silly as politics and religion, and so we keep being happy and sad and silly and mad together, just like we always have.  I remember family get togethers from when I was a child.  Listening to the old stories and the new day-to-day happenings of my Aunt's and Uncle's lives.  And, I recognize that when we all got together at my Sister's house, that's what we did too.  Laughing and talking over one another.  Hugging and sharing and loving one another.  History may not repeat itself exactly, but it does reflect itself from one generation to another.  

Everybody have a great week.  Hug someone you love.  Be careful and enjoy what you do.  

Lane