You and I first met at AAUW—you were a beautiful and intelligent young mom with two kids about the same ages as our two. (Somewhere there is a black and white photo is of you sitting in the sand at the beach with Heather and Erik.) On your first visit to our house Joe exclaimed, “You are the woman who is building kitchen cabinets as the Arcata High Adult Ed wood shop!!”—and that was the beginning of many evenings of good food and lots of laughs together.  Remember the night you served Joe the peat pot drizzled with chocolate syrup!?  And the AAUW meeting where I lost your cream and sugar set? 

 

Another of my mental pictures is of you and Ben leaving the CR Christmas faculty party at Merryman’s beach house to hunt down and bring the doctor (Gina Pennington) to our house for Angelina’s birth. And the time we filled up the pickup truck with scavenged apples and drove to Paradise to exchange our apples for bottles of juice. There were piano lessons for Mike and Erik at your old house—you taught them “Little Sack of Sugar, Little Sack of Sweet” while I bounced Angelina on my lap. 

 

As the kids grew we shared lots of family outings: hike trips to Canyon Creek, weekends at Ripple Creek Cabins, hot summer days together at Catalina and Trinity Lake,  and even a restaurant breakfast together one morning in Mexico!  Although it was Ben and Joe who were the “servers” at Heidi’s sweet 16 party, I’m sure that you were the organizer behind the scenes.  And I’ll bet that the sausage-making at Heather’s wedding rehearsal dinner was orchestrated by you too! 

 

For many years, at least once a week we would meet at the coffee shop on  the Plaza where we ordered coffee/tea and a Ramon’s French roll (we pulled out and put aside the inner white fluff and enjoyed eating just the crust with butter) and talked about everything—the kids/parenting, our husbands/marriage, our friends, recipes, sewing projects, books we had read, our frustrations, our achievements, our ideas,  and for 17 years as AFS volunteers, we planned student activities together.  

 

Now as we “begin” to age, the conversation often starts with the “recital”—what’s happening with our bodies?!  We are not seeing each other quite as often anymore, but when we are together, we are able to start right up again where we had left off! Thank you for almost five decades of sharing your life with me.  

Wishing you a birthday filled with peace and relaxation. 

May today be just the beginning of another year filled with happy memories.