Family ties are formed in various ways. Some are connected by blood. Others are created by choice. But the best ones are bound together by love.

Charlotte and Henry live hours apart and barely know each other. About the only thing they have in common (besides being 10 years old, seriously cute and incredibly smart) is this: Some years ago, Charlotte’s grandpa and Henry’s nana fell in love and decided to get married.

I’m that nana. My husband is Papa Mark. Our marriage formed a “blended” family that includes us, our children (my three, his two), their spouses, and nine grandchildren, so far.

Some of us live closeby, others are miles away. We all try to get together at least once a year, usually for Thanksgiving, yet somehow, it’s not always possible. Funny, isn’t it, how quickly a year goes by?

But recently, my husband’s son and his wife brought Charlotte and her brother and sister (Archer is 5, Beatrix is 3) to visit us. We all went out to dinner with my daughter and Henry and had to sit at a long table that made it hard to talk, even for big talkers like us.

Charlotte and Henry sat across from each other barely speaking until Papa Mark made them laugh. He’s good at that. Then the food showed up and we all talked and laughed for an hour.

Bea climbed up in my lap and said, “I have something that’s very, very exciting to tell you!”

“What is it?” I said. And she whispered, “I love you!”

I felt like Nana of the Year.

The next day, Charlotte asked me, “What’s the difference in first and second cousins?”

I wasn’t sure how to explain it, but I tried. Then she asked, “Is Henry my second-cousin?”

“No,” I said. “Technically, you are cousins by marriage. Papa Mark and I got married, so we get to share you. But cousins are just cousins, the way family is family and friends are friends. They’re not firsts or seconds. They’re just people we love.

She smiled. Then I told her a story about me and my cousins.

My mother’s parents had 10 children, all married, some more than once, and 22 grandchildren. Our big, crazy family gathered at their home most every Sunday to smoke and joke and argue and eat fried chicken, corn on the cob and banana pudding. It was good.

After we ate, the girl cousins sat on the steps singing hymns and laughing at the boy cousins who ran around the yard trying to kill each other with sticks. It felt a lot like Heaven on Earth.

I wish you could’ve seen us.

The point of that story is this: A good family is the gift of a lifetime. And cousins can make family life a whole lot more fun.

Charlotte laughed at my story. Especially the part about the boy cousins. Then she told me all about her neighborhood.

It’s a lovely community of homes built along a winding creek where in summer families float on inner tubes, stopping along the way to share a drink or a meal with their neighbors.

“I have so many friends who live there!” Charlotte said. “And we do so many fun things!”

I watched her face light up as she talked about their Fourth of July parade, trick-or-treating on Halloween, parties at Christmas, riding bikes and sharing stories. She and a few kids her age even formed their own bookclub.

I’ve seen that same excitement in my other grandchildren when they talk about their friends—going to sleepovers (where no one sleeps), playing in the park or chasing each other around somebody’s back yard.

They don’t have 22 “real” cousins. But they have friends who feel like cousins, and a few cousins-by-marriage who make family gatherings more fun.

Best of all, they have a big, crazy “blended” family that is bound together by love.

And we hardly ever try to kill each other with sticks.

What’s your story? The one you’ve been learning all your life, that tells where you’ve been, where you’re going, what you’ve learned along the way, who you’ve loved, who you are and hope to be someday?

When you tell that story, who’s your best listener? Who do you count on to hang on every word?

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about stories, what they do for us and why they’re important.

Growing up in the South, even before I learned to say “y’all” or gnaw the kernels off an ear of corn, I learned how to be still and listen with all my senses to a story. I didn’t understand the words. Not at first. Words and their meanings came later.

But I was born into a family of storytellers. My parents and grandparents. My aunts and uncles. My bossy big sister and my blind baby brother. The dogs that slept under the porch and even the fleas that slept on the dogs. They all told stories.

All I had to do was listen. And as I listened, I learned that every good story has three important parts. Do you know what they are? I’ll bet you do. You’re smart. And it’s a no-brainer.

Every good story—like every good life—has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

The beginning is a stopper, a few magic words that grab the listeners so they’ll sit up and pay attention: “Once upon a time there were three bears….”

The middle can be anything that will keep the listeners hooked. The bears go to the mall. An intruder breaks into their house, eats all their Pop-Tarts, trashes the living room and passes out on Baby Bear’s bed. Then the three bears come home and “There she is!”

In the end, the intruder makes a break for it, never comes back to the bear’s abode, and they all live happily ever after.

Your story might not sound like that. Mine doesn’t. Except the part about eating Pop-Tarts and trashing the living room.

But what our stories and our lives tend to share in common is structure: A beginning, a middle and an end; we’re born, we live and then, well, we move on.

To tell a whole story takes all its parts. But to tell it in pieces—just the beginning and some of the middle—we don’t need to know the end. We can tell what we know as life unfolds and trust for a happy ending.

Why? Stories have always been, and will always be, the way we understand ourselves and each other. They tell us who we are, separately as individuals and collectively as people.

They point out our differences, but at the same time, they show us how we’re all alike, what we have in common and how very much we need each other.

I often hear from readers who tell me my stories are their stories, too. I love that. It’s my next-to-favorite comment. My most favorite comment came from a kindergartner who, after hearing my story on how I once tripped my brother on a barbed-wire fence, said, “That’s the meanest thing I ever heard. I can’t believe you did that.”

Maybe I’ll tell that story to my grandkids. They’ll say, “Nana’s cool, but don’t cross her.”

Good, bad or horrid, our stories can tell it all, including things that make us more human (and might not be mentioned at our funeral.) Or they can be edited a bit, as my grandad’s often were, to cast us in a slightly kinder light.

As much as we need to tell our own stories, we also need to listen to the stories others tell. Even if we’ve heard them before. An old familiar tale can have a different meaning depending on why it’s being told. Maybe the teller just needs to tell it again.

If we don’t share our stories with each other—with people who mean the world to us, or strangers we meet in the check-out line—we might never truly know ourselves, or one another or why on Earth we are here.

What’s your story? I’d love to hear it. Tell it to someone. And ask them to tell you theirs, too.

The birthday card made me laugh. A man and a woman of a certain age (old) are talking. The woman asks, “Wearing that new hot hearing aid?”

“Yeah,” says the man, “it set me back $4,000!”

“Really? What kind is it?”

And the guy replies, “2:30.”

You might say, for people of a certain age, hearing aids would be nothing to joke about. But to borrow a bit of wisdom from Jimmy Buffett, “If we couldn’t laugh, we would all go insane.”

I liked the card for its humor, but I loved it because of the person who sent it to me. Let’s call her Emily. That’s not her real name, but it’s a good name for a good soul.

It’s been decades since Emily came to live with me, my first husband and our three young children. She was not the only teenager who took shelter in our home over the years. There were a half dozen or so others who stayed with us at various times, from a few weeks to a year, sleeping in our spare room, eating my cooking and suffering all the insanities our kids dished out.

Some of those teenagers were easier to live with than others. A few were nearly impossible. But they were all good kids who, for whatever reasons, needed a safe place to stay for a while. They enriched our lives and taught us more than we ever hoped to teach them.

Especially Emily. Life had not been kind to her. At times, it was unspeakably cruel. But in the fourteen turbulent years of her life, she had learned how to survive, how to make the best of bad times and most of all, how to laugh.

I wish you could’ve heard her.

That girl could out-bray a mule. If I ever get hearing aids, I plan to send her the bill. And now that I have her address, I’ll know where to send it.

At the end of Emily’s year with us, she went back to the family and the life she grew up in. For a while, things seemed to go well. When she was in a good place, I’d get a note or a long-distance phone call. When she was in a bad place, I didn’t hear much from her. I rarely knew how to get in touch with her. But she always knew how to reach me.

In recent years, I hadn’t heard a word from Emily. I’d almost given up hope of ever hearing from her again. But two months ago, I got a Christmas card from her, saying that she was well and sending us her love.

It included a return address. So I wrote back with a brief update on our lives. She knew that my first husband died years ago and that I had remarried. So I filled her in on our growing family, complete with photos of our nine grandchildren. When I mailed it, I prayed it wasn’t too much. I didn’t want to overwhelm her and risk never hearing from her again.

Then last week, she sent me that wonderful birthday card with a few more details of her life and how well she is doing. She especially seemed to like the photos of the grandkids. But my favorite line she wrote was this: “I now know how much God loves me, and it has finally brought me to love myself.”

Sometimes a birthday card can be a priceless gift.

If I could have given Emily anything when she was with us, I’d have gladly given her what she described in that card—the thing she needed most of all—a clear sense of how much she is loved by God, and in turn, a genuine love for herself.

But love is a gift. It can’t be received until it’s accepted. We don’t need hearing aids to hear it. We just need to be willing to risk everything, open our arms and our hearts and let it in.

Love speaks in a whisper, never a shout, sometimes with words, always with grace. It comes on the wind, in the sound of a baby’s breath, in a look in the eyes of one who cares or in the touch of a healing hand. It finds a home within our soul and sings a song that all is well.

Listen. Do you hear it?

My husband and I both celebrate our birthdays this month. One of us is getting older. Never mind who.

Actually, from the end of December until the middle of February, we celebrate eleven of the 21 birthdays in our immediate family.

Yes, that’s a lot of cake. My husband’s birthday was last week. Mine is next. We usually celebrate with dinner for the two of us or a family barbecue where he grills meat, I make potato salad and we buy a cake.

In the non-Covid years, we often celebrated our birthdays at some place with a warm beach and no Internet. Maybe we’ll do that again someday.

I can’t recall what we did for our birthdays last year. Like so many things since the start of the pandemic, it’s just a blur.

What do you think? Should we (a) allow some of the happiest occasions of our lives to fade into nothing? Or should we (b) celebrate and remember them clearly as the precious, fleeting moments that they are?

If you picked (b), I like you a lot. Memories don’t need to be elaborate or expensive. They just need to be remembered.

This morning, my husband asked me what I’d like for dinner on my birthday. As questions go, it was a bit odd. But when you’ve been together as long as we’ve been (20 years or so) you learn to hear more than just what’s said. I knew what he meant. If I wanted to go out to dinner for my birthday, where should we go? And if I wanted to eat at home, what should we cook?

For his birthday last week, we had dinner at a restaurant with a gift certificate from my son and his wife. Both the gift and the dinner were lovely. But I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do.

“You decide,” I said.

He hates it when I say that.

Why is it easier sometimes to say what we don’t want than what we do? I’m certain I don’t want a party. I know too many people to invite. And I’d feel bad and never hear the end of it from those who got left out.

I’m also sure I don’t want gifts. These days, if I need something, I get it at the grocery store. But I certainly want to celebrate another year of being alive.

Recently I read a story about a man who was given a birthday gift he would never forget. It was a jar filled with marbles—one marble for every Saturday remaining in his life, assuming he would live to be 100. Every Saturday, he was to remove one marble to remind him that he had one less Saturday left to live and that he needed to make the most of it. But no matter how many marbles remained in that jar, he would never be sure how many Saturdays he had left.

Here’s how I want to celebrate my birthday. First, I’ll sleep until I wake up. Waking up without an alarm clock is a celebration in itself. I’ll begin with a prayer of thanks for all my blessings and all the people who make my life such a joy. That will take quite a while.

Then I want two cups of coffee with heavy cream, the way my husband makes it for me.

Next, I’ll spend the day FaceTiming with my kids and grandkids and others I love, making big plans to see them soon and hug their necks.

At sunset, I want to sit outside with my husband to watch the sun go down, the stars come out and the moon rise up above us.

I want him to cook my favorite birthday dinner (whatever that may be) and clean up the mess without any help from me.

Finally, I’ll end the day as it began, with gratitude. That will be a birthday I’ll remember.

We never know how many “marbles” are left in the jar. I’m hoping for lots more for us all—for you and me and all our loved ones, for neighbors near and far and friends we’ve yet to meet.

Be assured, you don’t need to send me a birthday greeting.

Unless you really want to.

Have you ever wanted to be somebody? I mean, other than the somebody that you are?

If we’re honest, most of us might admit there have been times in our lives when we wanted to be richer or smarter, better looking or more loved.

My mother wanted to be all of that. But mostly she want to be Somebody. With a capital “S.” She was my mother, the biggest Somebody in my life. But even as a child, I knew that being my mother would never be enough to make her happy.

To be happy, she thought she needed to be Somebody—the kind of person people looked up to. Who was always welcomed with open arms. Who spoke her own mind, spent her own money, lived her own life and never “took nothin’ off nobody.”

She longed to be that kind of Somebody. And the longing left a big, aching hole in her heart.

Children often blame themselves for their parents’ unhappiness. I was married with children of my own before I began fitting together all the pieces of my mother’s puzzle.

It’s a big puzzle with lots of pieces I’ll never find, let alone fit them all together as a whole. But here are a few pieces I’ve put in place over the years.

She grew up in the middle of eight sisters, always wanting to be special, but never feeling it at all.

She left school at 15, to marry and start a family, certain that marriage and motherhood would make her Somebody. When it didn’t, she filed for divorce and moved back to her parents’ home with my older sister and me.

A year later, she fell in love with someone who made her feel like Somebody. But when she told him she was pregnant with his child, he left her and never looked back.

A year later—six months after my brother was born blind with cerebral palsy—she married a man who took pity on her and her three children, and who would spend more than 40 years—until she died—trying, and failing, to make her happy.

I learned a lot from my mother. How to sing harmony in church or on the porch or in the darkest of times. How to ask for forgiveness, knowing I don’t deserve it. How to walk into an empty kitchen and find the makings for peach cobbler.

But there are two fine things she taught me, not with her words, but with her sorrow: First, no one can make you happy; you have to do that for yourself. And second, people will know you’re Somebody if they can see it in your eyes.

I’m happy to say I’m happy. I’ll take happy over miserable any day. And I am Somebody to the people whose opinions matter most to me: I’m my husband’s wife and partner in life; my children’s mama and biggest fan; and my grandkids’ nana and partner in crime.

Recently, when I showed up at his house with cupcakes, Wiley, who’s 9, looked into my eyes and said, straight-faced, “Nana, you are too good to be true.”

Cupcakes aren’t cheap, but they are priceless.

Years ago, shortly before my mother died, I phoned to tell her that I had won a national award for my column.

“You won what?” she said.

“An award,” I said, “a big one.”

“For what?”

“For my column, Mama. You know that thing I spend hours working on every week?”

“Oh,” she said. “They give awards for stuff like that?”

“Yes, Mama, they do. They even gave me one for mine.”

She was quiet for a moment, as if overcome with emotion, or maybe just taking a bite of her Popsicle. Then she told me something I will never forget.

“Well, honey,” she said, with a grin I heard in her voice, “you’re smart, aren’t you? I guess you really must be somebody!”

“Yes,” I said, laughing, “I’m your daughter.”

And I always will be.

Someday I’d like to make a list of all the things I’ve found while looking for something else.

Photos I’d forgotten. Bills I meant to pay. Or a missing lid to a bowl that finally turned up the day after I broke the bowl.

This may sound a bit odd. But sometimes it seems I need what I “happen” to find more than I needed what I was looking for.

Well, except a lid to a broken bowl. Anyhow. The point I want to make is this: Life sometimes gives us what we need, even if we didn’t know we needed it.

Take this morning. I was looking for something online. Never mind what. I honestly can’t recall. But in the process, I came upon a quote I’d learned long ago, and forgotten.

I’ll tell you the quote, after I tell you how I learned it.

My first husband taught high school, coached basketball and loved being outdoors, running at the beach, camping in Big Sur or hiking in Yosemite Valley.

I loved those things, too. OK, I didn’t love hiking, but I did it. Our three children spent more waking hours outdoors than inside. It was good for them and especially good for their parents.

We also spent hours at games, both theirs and their dad’s. I like sports. And we ate at the snack bar, so I didn’t need to cook.

Those years passed all too quickly. Our two oldest were in college and our youngest was in high school when their dad was diagnosed with colon cancer. He battled it for four years, while we kept living the life we loved.

When he was no longer able to run or hike or teach or coach or take a walk around the block, he lay in his recliner reading John Muir’s writings on Yosemite.

He liked sharing Muir’s quotes with me. My favorite was this one I rediscovered today while looking for something else:

“The sun shines not on us but in us. The rivers flow not past, but through us….The trees wave and the flowers bloom in our bodies as well as our souls, and every bird song, wind song, and tremendous storm song of the rocks in the heart of the mountains is our song, our very own, and sings our love.”

In the years since we lost their dad, my children and I have tried to honor his memory by moving forward, living our own lives, singing our own songs.

Reading that quote today, I recalled when he read it to me. And I thought of how happy he would be to know that our children and I are happy; how much he would like (and empathize with) the man I married; how proud he would be of the people our children have become; and what joy it would bring him to see how beautifully they are raising the grandchildren he never met.

Loved ones leave us, but their love remains to watch over us and pray for us and cheer us on with every step we take.

Shortly after I read that quote, I got a video from my son, Josh. He had hiked to a waterfall with Jonah, who is almost 3, riding in a pack on his daddy’s back.

In the video, Jonah told me that waterfalls are made of water and come from rain. Josh tried not to laugh, but gave me a knowing grin. Then they both waved goodbye and continued on their hike.

I wish you could’ve seen them.

I watched that video twice. And as I watched, I recalled a day years ago, hiking the Mist Trail to Vernal Falls in Yosemite (trying not to look over the cliff at certain death) and following Josh, who was almost 3, riding in a pack on his daddy’s back.

My children are teaching their children to love Nature the same way their dad taught them. And those children will teach their children to love Nature, too.

When we leave this world, we will leave behind us in the trees and flowers and birds and wind and rocks in the heart of the mountains—as well as in the hearts of our loved ones—our very own song of love.

I don’t remember what I was looking for today. But I’m glad that what I needed found me.

Maybe you’ve heard people say, “In my next life, I want to be….” Then they fill in the blank with something they think might be an improvement.

I can’t imagine having another life. My current life tends to be about as much as I can handle. I hope to stay here long enough to see my grandkids grow up, then spend Eternity in a rocker on the porch of Heaven, watching over my loved ones, asking God a lot questions and letting somebody else cook.

Here’s a confession: I have an annoying tendency to think about things I don’t need to think about and to ask myself questions I can’t answer.

Do you ever do that?

I’m not sure why I do it. But it often seems to happen on days when I’m trying to avoid doing something I don’t want to do. This has been one of those days. And I don’t even know what I’m trying to avoid.

Anyhow. After considerable thought, I’ve decided how to fill in the blank on the sentence that started this train of thought: In my next life, if I have one, I want to be… a cast iron skillet.

Why? Thanks for asking. Bear with me while I explain.

I come from a long line of hard-cooking Southern women who would give up most any prized possession (except maybe their deviled egg dish.) But Lord help the fool who would dare to come between one of those women and her cast iron skillet.

My grandmother lived on a mountain in North Carolina, and baked cornbread like none you’ve ever tasted. She’d mix up a batter of locally milled cornmeal with milk from her cows and eggs from her chickens. Then she’d slap a hunk of home-churned butter in a cast iron skillet and slide it in the oven of an old wood oven. When the butter sizzled, she’d pour in the batter, bake it to perfection and serve it with more butter and honey.

I wish you could’ve tasted it.

My mother and her cast iron skillet kept us fed. Country ham. Bacon and eggs. Fried chicken or pork chops. And a peach cobbler I can never duplicate.

I was married with a family, living in California of All Places, the day she phoned from South Carolina, to say she had cancer.

“I’ll come see you soon,” I said.

When I got there, I could see she was failing. But it was a good visit. One of our best. As I was leaving, she said, “Wait!” She went out to the kitchen and came back with her skillet.

“This was my mama’s,” she said. “I want you to have it.”

On the flight home, I held it in my lap. Yes, that was before the days of airline security.

That skillet, and her middle name, are the only possessions she left me. I treasure the skillet for the meals it has served my loved ones and for the memories it holds for me; and I treasure our name for reminding me that I will always be her daughter.

Why would I want to be a cast iron skillet? Five reasons:
1. It’s incredibly strong and it never, ever breaks.
2. It’s not fancy, but if you need it, it’s nice to have around.
3. For some things, like bacon on a high flame or injustice to the innocent, it burns hotter than the hinges on the gates of hell. But when the bacon is done, or the injustice is righted, it always cools down.
4. It’s a little on the heavy side, but nobody seems to mind.
5. It feeds a family, holds a wealth of memories and keeps on doing what it does best.

Think about it: You could run for office with less character than a cast iron skillet and probably get elected.

I’m thankful for this life. I don’t plan on a “next” one. But I’m hoping that skillet can teach me things it taught my mother and my grandmother and a lot of good cooks before them.

I’d like to be as strong and good and purposeful as they were. At the least, I’d like to bake a decent cornbread.

I’m not there yet, but I’m still learning. And learning is life. Even if we try to avoid it.

Are you the kind of person who collects magnets with lots of pithy sayings and puts them on display in your kitchen?

I am. I’m not proud of it. I’m just saying I do that. Maybe you do, too. Or would, if you had a magnet that said something you wish you had said.

I love words. Especially words that make me smile and remind me of things I try to remember, but sometimes tend to forget.

One of my favorite magnets reads: “Don’t let yesterday use up too much of today.” What does that mean to you? For me, it means several things: Let bygones be bygones. Live in the here-and-now, not in the over-and-done. Learn from your mistakes so you don’t keep repeating them. Love who you are today as much as you loved being skinny and young.

Those are things I want to remember. Seeing that magnet helps me keep them in mind.

Here’s another one: “Dance as though no one is watching you; love as though you have never been hurt before; sing as though no one can hear you; and live as though heaven is on earth.”

I like that magnet a lot. It hangs in my kitchen, but I keep its words in my heart.

Here’s one with a message I first read on a condolence card from a friend soon after my first husband died: “Barn’s burnt down. Now I can see the moon.”

Losing the father of my three children, someone I thought I couldn’t live without, was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. But there are gifts that come with loss to help ease the pain.

For me, those gifts were priceless and healing. The kindness of strangers. The love of my children. A realization that life itself is a gift. And a burning desire to live well, truly alive, in honor of my husband’s memory. I smile at those gifts when I see that magnet, or stare up at the face in the moon.

There are two sayings on the wall of my kitchen for which I never need a reminder. The first one says, “Do one thing every day that scares you.” That’s easy. I just look in a mirror.

The other one isn’t a magnet. It’s a big red-lettered sign that says, “Eat.” I have no problem remembering to do that.

Then there’s this one, which is also not a magnet, but it sticks pretty well to the wall. It’s a neoprene cover for a beer can, a souvenir from a Paul Thorn concert. If you don’t know who Paul Thorn is, check him out. Then you can post a sign in your kitchen that says, “Play more Paul Thorn.” The Paul Thorn beer sleeve says, “Don’t let nobody rob you of your joy.”

Can I get an amen to that?

The best words on display in my home hang on the wall in the dining room. Years ago, when I remarried after seven years as a widow, I wanted to find something to represent our new life.

I found it in an antique shop—a wood framed, hand-stitched, beautiful embroidery of a Bible verse I learned as a child: “To everything there is a season and a time for every purpose under heaven. _ Ecclesiates 3:1.”

My life—much like yours, I suspect—is a series of seasons, each with its own purpose. Some are dark as a moonless night. Others are dazzling as a day in May.

But they are all meant to be lived well with purpose and gratitude, knowing that in time, every season, dazzling or dark, will surely come to end.

If you made your own magnet, what would it say? Would you hang it in your kitchen or hide it under your bed?

I wish I could see it.

If I made my own magnet, it would say this: “Life is short. Live it well. Lose with grace. Love with abandon. Cry a little. Laugh a lot. Sleep like a baby. And wake up each day just to see what will happen next.”

I keep those words in my heart and take them out whenever I need them. But I would hang that magnet in the kitchen right next to the sign that says “Eat.”

How do you teach a child to understand something you have never quite understood?

Growing up in a big Southern family, I knew what I wanted to be someday: A grandmama.

I loved my parents. But my grandmothers were the two most important people in my life. They made me feel safe and loved and smart. And they taught me all sort of things—how to read and write, how to listen closely, tell a good story, and look beyond someone’s face to see what’s in their heart.

Mostly they taught me how to love with abandon, holding nothing back, the way that they loved me. I knew they would love me forever on this Earth and someday from Heaven.

Every child needs that kind of love. It was a gift not only for me, but for my children and grandchildren and generations to come. Money helps, but love is a far richer inheritance.

My children never knew their grandmothers. Their dad lost his mom before we met. And we lived 3,000 miles from my mother, and visited only a few times before she died.

I wanted to teach my children all the things my grandmothers taught me. But I was busy being their mom_cooking their meals, doing their laundry, feeding their dog, going to their games and trying to keep my sanity.

It’s hard being a parent. Being a grandparent is easy, as long as the parents do most of the work.

My husband and I share nine grandchildren, all blessed with wonderful parents. It makes our job as grandparents not just easy, but fun. Only two things are hard: Finding time to spend with each child; and saying goodbye when it’s time to go.

Recently, I drove five hours south to spend a few days with my older son, his wife and their two little ones. Jonah is almost 3. Leilani is 8 months old.

When Leilani was born, I spent a few weeks with them and Jonah and I got to be good buddies. Since then, we’ve kept in touch with FaceTime calls. But I needed some real time.

So for four days last week, Jonah and I talked and laughed and played together. We read books, told stories and built tents to hide in from bears. Leilani watched us closely, clapping her hands.

Finally, it was time for me to go.

“Come sit here,” I said to Jonah, patting my lap. He climbed up and put his arm around my neck. Then I asked him the questions that I’ve trained him and his cousins to answer. I’ll teach them to Leilani when she’s older.

“How much do I love you?”

“All!” he said.

“And where is your nana when you can’t see her?”

He pointed to his chest and said, “In my heart!”

“Can you feel my love deep down in your heart?”
He thought about it a moment then nodded and smiled.

“I have to go now,” I said, “but I’ll come see you again.”

He turned away, but I took his face in my hands, smoothed his hair and smiled into his eyes.

“When someone goes away,” I said, “they take our love with them, and leave their love with us. You’ll always have my love and I’ll have yours. So if we miss each other, we’ll still feel loved and it will make us happy.”

Looking down, he pressed his hands together as if to pray. So I pulled him close and whispered, “Lord, bless this boy and his family. Bring us together again soon. And always help him feel how much he is loved. Amen.”

Then we hugged goodbye and I left, wishing we lived closer.

Driving home, the parched hills that were so threatened by wildfire were now drenched with rain and dazzling green.

I wish you could’ve seen them.

If a heart that is hurting feels loved, it’s like rainfall on dry land, a beautiful reminder that life and love persist.

I may never understand it. But I hope to teach it to my grandchildren.

There’s something about a brand new year that makes me want to wipe the slate clean, so to speak—clean house, clean diet, clean body, mind and soul—and start fresh all over again.

Not that I’ll ever do all of that. But I think about it. And I try. Today, for example, I’ve been working on a box of unopened mail from readers who were kind enough to read my column and to write back to me in reply.

These days, correspondence is mostly electronic, arriving daily in dozens of emails and posts on my website or Facebook page. I try to answer them promptly. But there are still, it seems, quite a few of us who prefer to write personal notes by hand, rather than on a computer.

So once a week, I go to the post office and pick up all the cards and letters I find stuffed inside my mail box (P.O. Box 922, Carmel Valley, Calif. 93924.) Then I take it all home and stuff it in another box until I have time to open and read it.

I wish I could reply right away to every note I receive, but it often doesn’t happen. Why? It’s pretty simple: I have a life.

I once received a letter from someone who noted that I might be too busy to reply in person, but they hoped to hear from someone on my staff.

Staff? I looked at my cat. She flicked her tail and walked away. I don’t have a staff. I don’t have a cat any more, either, but that’s another story.

I have a family (my husband, our five grown children, their others, and nine grandchildren.) And I have a few friends that I hope still remember my name.

I’m also thankful for the help and friendship of editors and others at newspapers that publish my column each week. But no one can answer mail for me. Not even my grandkids. I need and want to do it myself.

And yet, there are times when I fall behind. Not just with mail. With laundry. And phone calls. And life in general. I’m not proud of it, but there it is.

Do you ever fall behind, too? It happens, I guess, to most of us. Well, to some of us more than others. It’s not a good feeling. And it’s certainly not a good way to start a new year that we’re all hoping and praying will turn out to be our best year yet.

So today, for hours, I’ve been opening and reading mail from readers who wrote to me in the waning days of 2021. If you were one of them (or didn’t write, but just read this because you had nothing better to do) I want to say thank you.

Thank you for reading something I wrote. Thank you for caring enough to write back and share your thoughts.

Thank you for all the stories you’ve told me about your life, your memories and your family. I love reading those stories. They remind me time and again, that with so many differences, we are all still so much alike.

Thank you for your kind words of encouragement and for being, I am sure, someone who offers them not only to me, but to everyone around you. You make the world a better place. I’m grateful to have you as readers, but I think of you as friends.

I especially want to thank those of you who wrote to share memories of loved ones you have lost. It’s an honor to read those memories. My heart and my prayers go out to you.

Years ago, after my first husband died, a friend sent me a card with these words: “Then, when it seems we will never smile again, life comes back.”

Those are good words for those of us who’ve suffered the loss of a loved one—and for all of us in this weary old world still enduring a pandemic.

Life comes back.

The last note I opened today was a Christmas card from “Helen” in Allegany, N.Y., who wrote: “Thank you for sharing so many wonderful memories.”

Thank you, Helen, for making me smile.

Tomorrow, I’ll go to the post office and hope to find the box stuffed again with mail.