Laurel Elisabeth Stevens

Dear Mom and Dad, A week and two days ago the packers came to your house in Houston.  All your piles of belongings, sorted for “air,” “sea,” or “storage” were boxed up and labeled.  And tonight you will spend your third night in your new home in London.   Your two-day stay with us was wonderful.  I didn’t think about you leaving.  I just enjoyed having you here. As I mentally prepared for your move, I keep thinking about my last sight of you as you left for Vietnam in 2003.  I was seven months pregnant, wondering how you could leave me as my hour of need approached.  But really I knew why.  You went with your husband.  You belonged to each other and I, for nearly three years at that point, belonged to another.  And it was good.   Of course, you could hardly stand not being there when Elisabeth was born.  We called you on the phone somehow, and Dad, newly christened “Grandpère” jumped out of bed in his excitemen...

Laurel, Elisabeth and Grandma Virginia--December 2012 John and I and the kids wrapped up our Christmas traveling with a visit to my dad’s mom, Grandma Virginia.  She’s 96, and losing height with every year, it seems.  But her smile and her wink are as bright as ever . . .if not brighter.  The smile is fine, but that wink of hers, it stabs my heart every time.  It hasn’t changed in all the years I’ve known her. She recognized us, but I said our names clearly just in case she’d forgotten.  I'm never quite sure.  She raved over how the kids had grown.  It had been a year and a half since she’d seen them.  We’ve all changed in that year and a half--the kids and Grandma the most.  Right away she was asking if I’d seen Mother, and when the others were coming. Mother, I assumed, referred to her mother, Nana, who lived with them all the time my dad was growing up, but who passed away a generation ago.   Thoughts ran throug...

There was a bit of worry about the cold weather here in The Woodlands.  Talk of freezing rain that dissipated into nothing.  Friday is Park Day for our homeschooling group, and thankfully, this group is a "whatever the weather" kind of group.  If they can do 95 degrees at noon in July, they can do drizzle and 40 degrees in January.  Because, you know, 40 degrees and drizzle in Texas is, um, very cold.    There was hot chocolate, there were blankets, and hats, but I think my children, lately come from Michigan and before that, Germany, were the best dressed.  Layers, hats, an extra pair of gloves.  Henry even had extra warm knee high socks that John brought him from Hannover. I'm tickled about two things: Henry found that the person he most wanted to play with an 11 year-old boy.  And Elisabeth and a few other kids are planning a club to raise money for a water well through World Vision.  I'm trying really hard, really hard to just sit ...