twig studies, going home, and egg dyeing

 today we studied and sketched the buds and twigs we gathered yesterday.

after working on our sketches in the morning, it was time to go home. sunday would be easter, and we needed to drive to connecticut.

 we stopped at the cemetary to lay forsythia on aunt evie's gravestone.

 and we stopped at the beach one last time . . 

 before getting on the road.

 at home, at night, we dyed easter eggs!!

 i had told aunt kathy that we would bring them for easter.

 pouring the vinegar into the red cabbage pot.

it made for a late night, but it was fun.

remembering . .

it's a year now since my aunt evie passed away. i almost feel more sad . . time is supposed to soften but somehow it hasn't . .

----

the above picture was taken when she worked for ralph helfer on his wild animal compound in soledad canyon in los angeles. she helped to handle his administrative affairs, and she loved working there! she would regale me with wonderful stories about the animals: which ones had been sick, which ones were performing for the tv show daktari, which snake had crawled through her office window and scared her half to death (but she sat still as stone while it slithered by!)

i know she felt very close to the animals.

her grandson, ryan, is at school in st. petersburg, russia, right now. i know she's with him in spirit and enjoying every moment!

ninth day: reading at home, the beach, and the cemetery

when we returned from the beach and the cemetery, nonno was on the phone with three to four different companies complaining about the lines on the laundry lids. they make many of them very faint, so that you cannot see where to fill the liquid to. the company representatives all apologized that their lids were not clear enough, and promised to send nonno coupons for a free container of detergent! at one point, after hanging up the phone with one company, and calling another, nonno found himself talking to the same representative. some of these large corporations have many detergents . .

memories of my aunt

so when i was four my aunt and uncle moved to california with my cousin. how were we to see them? we certainly didn't have the money to fly all of us at once . . but my mom was resourceful and she planned and plotted and mapped and packed, and lo and behold there we were . . on the road . . driving to california. the first year we went was in 1967 and we stayed in motels the entire way. the second year we went we drove and we camped the entire way. i much preferred the camping. we stayed at yellowstone national park, custer state park, glacier national park, yosemite . . and several KOA kampsites in the middle of the trip which i did not like very much. this picture was taken in front of my aunt's house during the second cross-country trip in 1969. my mom must have taken this picture. my dad is squatting in front, my aunt is on the left, my sister is behind my dad, and my cousin is behind me. i could never keep up with my sister and my cousin . . they had eight and nine years on me . . so my pal was my aunt evie, and in california we were always cowboys.

margaret evelyn lindberg

this is c with my aunt evie, taken when we saw the nutcracker together in december of 2005. my aunt passed away tuesday evening. she was my mom's older sister, and only surviving sibling. she lived in annapolis with her husband, not far from her daughter and son-in-law and grandson (who is currently studying in scotland). she was a second mom to me. i saw her probably every week up until i was four years old (she and my mom always did so much together) and often stayed with her if my mom had errands to run, or work to go to. it was then that she moved to california where i spent a fun and adventurous summer with her when i was eight years old (coming home with a suitcase of toys). and when i was eighteen, where was the only place i would even think about going to college? california of course. i lived with her and my uncle off and on for several summers and winters until i got my masters in theatre from UCSB. and then i came home again to my mom . . her love and spirit will always remain strong in our hearts, and she is finally free of the terrible pain that visited her these past few years, but we all feel incredibly sad not to have her with us on this earth anymore . . right now it's just a lost feeling, knowing that she's not there to visit with or call on the telephone.