311: family

With everything going on--travel and news and exercise and changes--I suppose I'm not surprised I didn't pause to share this delicious birthday cake. (Of course, being on a wellness kick, I behaved myself and didn't even taste it, but my mother said it was like fudge, and I believe her. I did have a sliver of strawberry, and that taste exploded in my mouth, and I think it's enough for a summer afternoon.)

My father turned fifty-nine on July 11th, and we went to Green Bay to celebrate (and also for a get together with my high school girlfriends and their families). This is the year I turn thirty, and it's my father's last year before he hits sixty--how do we tumble through life so fast?

I think I mostly kept quiet about my father's birthday because I also received some sad news on the same day: my grandmother has had kidney disease for four years, but she's only just telling us now because she's nearing that end stage--she'll need dialysis soon. This is the same grandmother who made me love gardening, whose husband inspired these poems, the woman who stood strong after my grandpa passed from Alzheimer's.

It's sad news for our family, though this I know for certain: my grandmother, who just turned eighty-eight earlier this month, is a strong woman, a good woman, a woman whose life is an example for my own, who has given me genes I hope to pass on to my own children, whose heart is big, and who has found peace in this life and what will come. I hope she's around for much longer, and I hope the time she is with us is not hard.

I also know she would have loved a taste of that cake! Perhaps I'll have to find a good flourless chocolate cake recipe and make her one on our next visit.

For now, revisit Middle Sand Lake: spring coming, last summer 1, swimming in sand, last summer 2, last summer 3.