Home away from home

 The Coach and I took a little trip this month, something we don't do too often. But it was my birthday weekend, and I only wanted one thing -- a hug from my baby girl.

You see, it has been way too long since I've been able to wrap my arms around my daughter, who had the nerve to pack up her life and move all the way to Florida back in October. She and her new husband picked up and moved to live with his grandparents, who have a nice big house with a nice big yard. Since then, they've both gotten nice, well-paying jobs and are working on building a little nest egg for their future.

I'm happy for them, really. No, really. But my mama's heart was hurting. I needed to see her, to hug her. And she was pretty excited to show us her new home away from home.

So we packed up the car and even took the dog for the eight-hour drive to Crystal River, Florida.

It's a lovely little town in the middle part of Florida where the waters are sort of the color of my pool when I'm fighting the algae. But pretty! And it's where hundreds of manatees gather in the winter to chill -- literally. The water is 72 degrees. Always. 

Needless to say, there's lots to do around there, and well, our kid made sure we did a lot of it.

We arrived Friday night just in time to enjoy a nice steak dinner at a place called Cody's. No first-timer, Lora ordered a BAM -- Big Ass Margarita. But really, it was a rum punch that called itself a Margarita that was served in a big martini glass. We got two straws.

The next day, they decided to take us hiking. Sort of. First we stopped at this HUGE flea market that reminded me of The Grove at Ole Miss. There were tents and people selling just about everything you could imagine -- including puppies and kittens. From there we went to the Homosassa Springs Wildlife Park, a multi-acre sanctuary for endangered and, in some cases, injured animals. We walked three miles around the lovely bluegreen spring and saw a couple of manatees, some vultures, flamingoes, panthers, owls, gators and even a black bear.

It was rather warm, though, so after our exercise, we headed over to a waterfront restaurant called Crackers. There I ordered a real margarita -- a Three Sisters Margarita -- that kind of had me three sheets to the wind by the time I finished it on an empty stomach. Luckily, the fried shrimp and hush puppies soaked that right up. There was a musical ensemble playing music not too badly, but they did not know and could not fake "When I'm 64" by the Beatles on my birthday eve. 

Sunday was my actual birthday and Lora the Librarian had to work at the Floral City Strawberry Festival. This was no little country fair. This thing was huge with many craft vendors selling their wares, multiple food and drink stations and live music. We had to make another hike, a little shorter this time, to get to the Library's tent, where Lora was giving cute story walks during which she had to pretend to walk like a bear. (It was soooo cute!)

We sat under the trees and ate kettle corn and snow cones and I, of course, had an official Strawberry Short Cake for my birthday.

Dinner that night was at a place called Swampy's, a "Cajun/New Orleans" style restaurant on the Rainbow River. We couldn't see the river or a rainbow because it was dark, but we did hear, then see a few rather large alligators swimming in the water not far from us. Then, Gavin probably saved the life of a tourist who had kayaked to the restaurant and was trying to get back in it after having a few beers. It was dark. The bank was sloped and he had not seen the alligators swim by. Gavin made sure he at least got back in his boat. As for the food, well, the chef should take a weekend trip to New Orleans.

If you know you know that March the 9th is a bad luck day in our family. Bad things happen. Deaths happen. We all try not to travel far or schedule elective surgeries on this day. But we took a short trip to Wiki Wachee Springs to see the mermaids!

I had always wanted to go, ever since I was given a wanna-be mermaid as a child. For most of her young years, Lora would say she wanted to be a pink mermaid. Her room and my upstairs bathroom became a mermaid shrine with all kinds of all things mermaid. And even now that she has moved, it is still Lora's mermaid shrine.

Wiki Wachee Springs is another state park with a few attractions, many of which were closed on March 9th because of low water levels, the lasting effects of a recent storm, it being a Monday and only March. There were only three young ladies doing the show which, to be honest, is probably the same show some of our grandmothers watched in the 1960s. It's corny. It's kitchy. It ain't what it probably used to be. But that's OK. I may have been sitting next to my now-25-year-old daughter, but really I was with my 4-year-old who dreamed of being a mermaid.

Yes I cried. And also wanted to punch the mom behind us who never stopped trying to gentle-parent her kids.

From there we grabbed sandwiches from Costco and went to a real 72-degree Crystal River spring with a little beach. Lora, Gavin and Marty waded out to the middle of the bluegreen water while I stayed closer to shore. Oh, I got my feet wet! 

Now we all needed naps.

But first we exchanged thank yous to the grandparents for taking in our daughter with her husband, dog and three cats, and gave our last hugs. I tried not to cry. I almost succeeded.

I don't know when we'll see them again, if we will drive back to Crystal River or they will come back home to us someday. Holidays? Maybe. Just because? Maybe. Another birthday perhaps. If we do go back, we might need to be in better shape. Or, we can just say, "Nah. We've been there and done that" and relax a little more.

But I'll definitely need more hugs.

Mardi Vieux

Everyone has heard of Mardi Gras.

It's Fat Tuesday, the day before the start of Lent, when everyone -- Catholic or not -- indulges in all kinds of questionable behavior before (presumably) giving it all up for the 40 days leading up to Easter. Supposedly, it helps you get into Heaven.

 In Louisiana and some other southern outposts, Mardi Gras is a paid holiday when just about everything closes -- stores, schools, shops. That's to give everyone a whole day to enjoy their indulgences while sitting on the side of the road, waiting for a parade. The parade is a small flotilla of floats and/or trucks filled with people who also are partaking in their indulgences, and they throw things at us. 

 But in New Orleans and the surrounding areas, Mardi Gras isn't just one day. It's several days and even weeks of such behavior, along with glitzy balls, beautiful tableaus, king cakes with and without cream cheese, clothing of weird color combinations, costumes, house parties, crawfish boils, tourists, nightmare traffic and lots and lots of alcohol.

Now don't get me wrong. All of those things are fun, and I have done probably more than my fair share of all of the above. But, eventually, you get over it. 

Instead of celebrating Mardi Gras -- Fat Tuesday --  you start to celebrate Mardi Vieux -- Old Tuesday. That's when you stay home and watch the parades on TV so you can drink iced tea, laugh at the silly costumes, and pee in your own bathroom instead of some stranger's. Or a bush.

Hey! It happens. Even the most ardent Mardi Gras fan gets old. Nobody wants to see your booty or your boobs anymore, and neither will get you any beads anyway, so you end up in some shiny-sequiny-feathery outfit that makes you look like the wacky old lady you now are, in comfortable shoes you really don't want to get dirty. 

My late mother-in-law Jane, her sister Alice and their cousin, Dottie.

The thought of packing up the car is daunting. You need blankets and jackets because it might be cold, it might be hot. You need a cooler with ice, and a couple of kinds of beer, and a couple of kinds of soft drinks, and  a couple of bottles of water. Mardi Gras is a marathon, not a sprint. 

Then you need snacks and, of course, some Popeye's fried chicken, but the line is always too long, it always takes forever, and they always, always, always get the order wrong. 

 Now you have to decide where to go. The Krewe of Chad (the privileged) have already staked out their Uptown spots with ladders and tarps so there's no place to go, really. If you're lucky, you have a friend who has a house along the parade route. But it's still going to take you an hour and a half to get there and another 40 minutes to find a place to park that is both safe and legal. If you're incredibly lucky, they have parking. At the very least, you'll now have a place to pee. 

 But you're still old with a bad back, knees and feet. There's no way you can stand on the side of the road behind a wall of ladders for hours on end, screaming and waving and hoping to get the attention of one guy sober enough to spot you in the crowd. And maybe he'll throw you a bunch of beads and you'll feel like a Super Bowl champion for catching them -- but then what the hell are you supposed to do with them when it's over? 

Unknown float rider.

And after the last float has passed, you have to hurry up to get out of the way of the street sweepers, lugging your chairs, blankets, jackets, cooler, and all of your loot back to the car. Do you remember where you parked? And you have to hurry because you probably blocked someone in who is in a hurry to get to the Interstate, where you both will sit in bumper-to-bumper traffic for an hour or so, and you really need to pee. 

And then you'll get home with your beads, a plastic sword, silk roses and light-up sunglasses. You'll throw it all in a pile in the corner for now because you have to run to the bathroom. You'll check your shoes to see how much damage was done and if they can be salvaged. You'll grab one of the last beverages from the cooler and a cold drumstick from the Popeye's box and sit and reflect on the day. 

Because there really is nothing like Mardi Gras, whether you're young or old. If you grew up with a family and friends who loved it, you're lucky. If you only got to experience it once or twice, you're still lucky. And if all you have left are the happy memories of those wonderful days spent with parents and siblings and aunts, uncles, cousins and friends -- or strangers -- well, you're really one of the fortunate ones.

Because everywhere else, it's just another Tuesday. 

A million thanks

At an unknown hour on an unknown day in the last week, this little slice of literary heaven reached an amazing milestone.

Someone, either accidentally on purpose, visited TheLyonsDin.com and became its one millionth visitor. I wish I could say they were greeted with confetti and balloons but, alas, they were not. They either scrolled around and read a couple of blog posts about me, my daughter or my husband, or they said 'Oops!" and left. It is highly probable that they Googled 'big tits and mardi gras" and landed here. It happens more than you think.

I'm still trying to wrap my head around that magical number -- 1,000,000. One million people somewhere in the world discovering my little blog. There is a little map on the bottom right of this page that shows where my visitors are from. I think it still works. For a while, I was very popular in Russia. I now know they were bots and were probably scraping my English content for nefarious purposes. 

I also want to state publicly that absolutely no money has been made from this blog. I had a few offers to put ads on my page, but none worth entertaining. Sadly, no big conglomerate has offered to buy my domain either -- not that I would want them to. I've seen the results.

I was encouraged to write a book after a posting about the week our daughter was born. I did, but it hasn't made much money either. 

You don't need to pay to read me or even subscribe. I let people on Facebook know when I've posted something new and, somehow, that works. And Google. 

So how did we get here? Well, before there was Facebook, there was America Online. And I, having just adopted the most precious baby girl in the world, needed a way to share things with my family, friends and a host of other women who had gone or were still going through the difficult infertility journey. I posted a few pictures and cute quotes on my AOL Hometown.

Then, one day, AOL decided it didn't want to be in the blogging business and moved us all over to Blog Spot. That eventually was bought by Google and became Blogger.

And a little blog was born.The Lyons Din. A din is a loud noise. A co-worker of mine said if I ever had a column in the newspaper we worked for, I should call it that. Instead, I used it here.

I started slow, writing small -- what today might be called a Facebook post -- about Lora, The Coach, weird or funny things that happened, a fun link here or there.

That was 2006.

Then in 2010, the Men in Ties decided to bench me. Moved me from fulltime female sports writer to female clerk who also writes about crime in a Louisiana parish where the crime rate is lower than the current president's approval rating. My creative side was stifled. I needed an outlet. I had The Lyons Din.

Then, when I was laid off in 2012, it became my solace. You know 2011 was a bad year because I wrote more than 100 posts.

In all, I've written 374 (now 375) posts. Posts about my life, my jobs, my lack of jobs, my search for jobs, my daughter, my husband, my stepchildren, our crazy blended family, our dogs, our mamas, life, death and baseball. It's certainly more than a million words. I guess I've had a million ideas.

I wrote one about Mardi Gras which, to this day is the most seen and read, with more than 37,000 views.

The one about rescuing my friends from the Spillway after a tornado interrupted the Warrior Dash reached 26,000.

The one about the first fight with my mother-in-law after she moved in and I became her full time caretaker got 8,600.

 I'll be the first to admit that I know very little about web analytics. I don't know exactly how to read all the graphs that show peak traffic or how to maximize it to my benefit.  I'm just a blogger. A writer who has to write. Or die. 

Some would call me a "mom blogger." 

Well, I tried to be. I tried to model The Bloggess, Scary Mommy, Hot Mess Mom and others. Scary Mommy sold her blog to a conglomerate and now is battling brain cancer. A couple have migrated to Facebook. A bunch of them just quit.

I'm still hanging on. 

People say people don't read blogs anymore. Maybe I'm proving them wrong. I hope you keep visiting once in a while.

Thank you all! I wish I could give you all cake!

Lo

Gone Girl

 

I always knew that one day she would fly the nest. Everybody told me. It's in all the parent books. I mean, it's The Goal, right? Good Parenting 101. Love them, raise them, teach them well, send them on their way.

I was fortunate that she never really went to many sleepovers. Like me, she preferred to stay home.

She was in school when she went to her first and only sleep-away camp. I drove her the five hours away and left her at a college dorm for a week. I don't know if she knows that I had to pull over and cry on the way home.

A few years later she went off to college, another school five hours away from home. We bought all the things and packed all the cars and followed her north to set up her dorm. She let me carry it all in on a blistering hot Louisiana day. She let me make the bed. And then I had to just leave her there. Alone! It was nearly the hardest thing I ever had to do. I'm pretty sure she knows I cried most of the way home. 

Turns out it was a bit of a false start, though, as Covid interrupted her freshman year and sent her back home just a few months after she left.

But then things settled down and she flew again ... and again ... and again... until she came home with a diploma. But, truth be told, she pretty much dropped it off, along with some dirty laundry and all the college paraphernalia she no longer needed, and moved in with her boyfriend. Turns out, all those times were practice for the real thing.

But even though she wasn't in my nest any longer, and her old bedroom was finally clean and tidy, she was close. She could come over to raid the fridge or borrow something to wear. I could invite her over when I made chili, lasagna or vegetable soup. We could entice her with a nice Sunday roast. Her friends actually enjoyed our pool. 

We had a routine. She lived in her space with her boyfriend -then-fiance-then husband (same guy!), a dog and three cats and I didn't have to clean up after her. It was nice. Hugs were easy to request and to receive.

Then she lowered the boom. 

Just a few months after her lovely summer wedding, she announced that they were moving all the way to Florida. The plan was to live with Gavin's grandparents to cut expenses and save some money to get steadily on their feet. 

OK. Sure.

Yes, I was in denial. I convinced myself that it wouldn't really happen -- right up until the day it did.

She got a job interview in Florida, started packing up everything she still wanted, tossed the rest, loaded up the dog and now two cats (rest in peace, Flea) and drove off to chase her dreams.

And she just left me here, in my empty nest, surrounded by a bunch of her stuff she doesn't want but doesn't want me to get rid of either. Her wedding dress and bouquet. Her high school letter jacket. A couple of guitars she never learned to play. Books she read and loved. The start of her vinyl collection. A bunch of BTS memorabilia and a whole lot of clothes.

Then there's the stuff she doesn't really want but I don't want to get rid of. Her Grow Up Girls. The box of keepsakes from the day she came home from the hospital (including a pink bubble gum cigar). The keepsakes from the day the judge officially declared she was ours. 

But, there's also a bunch of stuff that we have no place else to put since Hurricane Ida took our garage. There's a full-sized ice chest in the corner and a ceiling fan I can't find anyone to put up for me. A couple of bag chairs and a Tulane tent. I keep rearranging things to make it easier to look at, but there's still a bunch of wedding paraphernalia I'm trying to get rid of.

It's all now traces of someone who used to live here. A room that used to be hers. It's not a shrine or anything, just a glorified storage unit. She won't return someday like some heroine in a Hallmark Christmas movie to find her room just as she left it. I mean, the bed will be made.

But if she needs a jacket, she'll be able to find one in her closet. 

Bummer

They called him The Bummer -- short for Bill Bumgarner, the veteran sports writer for the old Times-Picayune who has been a fixture on sidelines and in pressboxes for decades. The man who was a friend and mentor to many, including me, and a prolific filler of scrapbooks. 

If you met him, you never forgot him. The man was straight out of central casting. Curmudgeon No. 1 played by Bill Bumgarner, a small, wiry sprite of a man with a shock of white hair and a twinkle in his eye.

He seemed to be always annoyed, and you didn't have to wonder why. He told you. He told everybody. He lived on a soapbox. 

Before cell phones he spent his whole day calling coaches and waiting for them to call him back. They almost always did. 

He spent hours on the phone in the old TP office, grilling coaches about who their best players were and why. How big were they? How fast could they run a 40? Could they play college ball? Division I or Division II? How were their grades? 

We had no choice but to listen. He was loud, with a booming voice -- even when he tried to whisper. And he had a quip for every occasion.

After cell phones, he still used the landline for as long as he could. A technophobe forever, Bummer never did figure out why today's phones are called "smart" or why laptops were better than the old typewriter he still had.  

He was Old School before it was cool. On Friday nights, he prowled the sidelines of football stadiums, somehow keeping copious stats on the players and a play-by-play of the action. After the game, he knew exactly which coach and which players to grab for a quick quote he would commit to memory with just a few jotted words.  I never saw him use a recording device. 

He would then take it all back to his office where he typed up his perfect story with a perfect lede on a desktop -- only because he had to.  For years he lugged around a piece of equipment known as a portabubble, a mammoth machine that made sending stories easier than the old carrier pigeons they used to use. We often joke that they would probably find several in Bill's house when he was gone.

He was the master of the first paragraph and there was no fluff. He told you who won, how, why, who scored and what they had to say about it.

When his story was filed and the boxscore called in, he would check the other scores then head out to a local watering hole for a beer or two. 

Bummer had been doing this for a long, long time by the time I came into his orbit. I have to admit, he was a little scary at first, being so loud and ornery. But he was really just a burnt marshmallow with a mushy inside. 

He called me "Redhead" (maybe because he used to be one himself) until I wasn't anymore. And even as we got older, he called me "Kiddo." I'm a 63-year-old woman. He still called me "Kiddo."

For whatever reason, Bummer took pity on me as the new girl in the office. He helped me out when the drunks would call from the bars with stupid questions and ask for the West Coast scores. He helped me learn the finer points of baseball, hockey and horse racing as I learned to put together the results. He would take the phone when someone got a little too rude. He brought me gladiolas he had grown in his garden.

In September of 1989, my dad, who had been battling a heart condition, died. My mom called the office to tell me, but I was downstairs at lunch. I'm not sure who took the call, but she said to him, "I need someone to tell Lori her dad has died."

Whoever answered the call told Bummer. And when I returned from lunch, it was he who came up behind me at my desk, hugged me and whispered in my ear.

Years later, Bummer and Pete Barrouquere drove all the way to Houma to attend my brother's funeral.

As I got more into writing stories at the paper, my first beat was the local playgrounds. Knowing that's where old coaches and old players go to try and kill themselves on league nights, Bummer who took me around and introduced me to everybody. And I guess if I had Bummer's seal of approval, I automatically had their cooperation. I quickly became "The Leagues Lady," and was very popular among the beer drinkers of New Orleans.

When the Men in Ties decided maybe I could cover high school sports full-time (even though I was a woman), it was Bummer who took me to a game and patiently showed me how to keep a play-by-play and add up the stats. It was a perfect system for this mathematically challenged writer. 

As I raced towards my upper 20s, Bummer also decided I should no longer be single. He tried to be a Cupid, fixing me up on dates with several coaches he knew and Clay from the circulation department. Then he started inviting me and some of my girlfriends to meet him and his pals at his favorite bars (places the tourists don't go). We had some fun times at the old Parkway Tavern, Par Four, the Bengal and Legends. 

And that is where he finally got one right. 

Bummer introduced me to my husband, Marty Luquet. Marty had been a damned good high school baseball coach on the West Bank of New Orleans, leading what others would consider a Bad News Bears team to several district championships. Bummer had written many stories about him and covered many of his games. 

By the time I came around, Marty was recovering from his recent divorce and had joined the Legends softball team. Every time I'd meet Bummer at Legends, he'd tell me, "Marty with the party is here!" And I'd say to myself, "I don't know who that is." But there was this cute, fun guy who liked to dance to "Strokin'" with me. Yeah. It took me a while to figure out he was, indeed, Marty with the Party. 

We were married on December 17, 1994, and one of our stops on the way to our honeymoon hotel that night was Bummer's annual Christmas party.

Once I moved out to the River Parishes Bureau in LaPlace, Bummer became my mentor from afar. He would call me to let me know I had something wrong in one of my stories or to give me a heads-up about something happening that I needed to know.

He accompanied me on my first road trip to Shreveport in my brand new Isuzu Rodeo (manual transmission) to cover a state baseball tournament, grumbling every time I had to smoke a cigarette.

We would meet up at All-State meetings, Sugar Bowl Hall of Fame meetings and Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame meetings to discuss and debate candidates. I always, always deferred to Bummer's encyclopedic knowledge of coaches and athletes. We shared press rows at basketball. I helped him cover volleyball (he had no clue). We sweat together at track meets. 

In my first year on the job, I won a little award for one of my stories and Bummer encouraged me to go to the Louisiana Sports Writers Convention, which was in Baton Rouge that year. I did go and let Bummer introduce me to everyone. 

The next year, I won a big award and attended the convention, which was being held in Natchitoches in conjunction with the annual Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame Induction. After that, I went to just about every convention around the state. A few years later, I was asked to be on the Hall of Fame selection committee. 

In 2023, I was inducted into the Louisiana Sports Hall of Fame.

The LSWA hospitality room has always been the hub of our conventions. It's where we gather to see who is still alive, who is still mobile, who is still employed. We've watched each other age and our children grow up over beer, soft drinks, snacks and, once upon a time, Bourre games. And as you'd walk into the hotel lobby and turn the corner, you'd know the room was open and occupied because, well, you'd hear Bummer telling one of his tales. Probably one you've heard a hundred times already. 

I will miss that sound. I will miss him. 

A heart attack took Bummer down on a late summer Sunday afternoon. I admit, at first I thought it rather fitting that he would have a heart attack after a Saints game in which they lost in spectacular fashion, but ultimately it seems simple yard work got him. 

Since then, my friends and I have tried so hard to express what he meant to us, to our profession, to our organization and to thousands of high school athletes and coaches. 

I will never forget how he took care of me as a young, green cub.

 I will never forget his care and concern -- and joy -- as we went through our roller coaster adoption process. 

I will never forget his epic soapbox rants about the state of the newspaper business in general and our former employer in particular.

I will remember dancing with him at my wedding and doing the cha cha to "Because" by the Dave Clark Five at Legends. 

I will remember his holding court in the LSWA hospitality room and complaining because the induction ceremonies always went on too long. 

I will remember his lovely antique-filled Metairie home and his large collection of World War II memorabilia. I will remember his angst when Hurricane Katrina flooded it. 

I will remember the twinkle in his eye.

And I will never forget his voice, still calling me "Kiddo."  

The Treasure Chest

  

Having spent more than 30 years researching my family history, I've learned a lot about my people. 

I'm a little bit Irish, a whole lot of English, some French, a touch of German and, somewhere, one percent Native American.

I also know that I descend from a very long line of packrats -- people who keep everything and don't know how to throw anything away. This was not a surprise, really. At least I know I come by it honestly.

This notion was recently reinforced when I inherited "The Trunk," a very large steamer trunk that belonged to my great-grandmother, my grandmother, my mother and, finally, my sister, who decided it was hers (dammit). She took it and put it in her garage, which sadly flooded a few years back. But let me say this about those old turn-of-the-century trunks -- they were built to last. Remarkably, everything was very well preserved except for a few photo albums that stuck together. 

The Coach and I dragged it home, and it took me a few weeks to get up my gumption to go through it. Once I opened it and got past the musty smell from the flood and the many years, I spent a week strolling down other people's memory lanes and sifting through the memories and mementos of four generations of very sentimental women. 

They kept everything.

Bills. Receipts. Checks. Check registers. Newspaper clippings, especially of classmates who married, had babies and died. Tickets. Programs. Dance cards. Birthday cards. Sympathy cards. Congratulatory cards and telegrams.

And every letter ever written to them.

I found the funeral book from my great-grandmother, my grandmother and my grandfather, to add to the one from my mother-in-law and my father-in-law.

I found my grandmother's high school scrapbook, filled with blurry black and white photos of young flapper girls with bob hairdos. She attended Sophie B. Wright High School in New Orleans and was a member of the Terrible Tooters, a music and drama group. I have a ticket to her graduation, the program, and her senior yearbook.

   

Grannie married a boy who went to Warren Easton High School. I have a ticket to his graduation as well. He was the son of a politician in Algiers who served as a Councilman and as a State Representative. There were a few papers of his and some stationery from his role as the Union Head for the Railroad Conductors.

My other great-grandmother, Lena, was a registered nurse. There were lots of identification cards, membership cards, and calling cards from the early 1900s and many letters thanking her for her kind care.

When I was about 2 years old, my family loaded up the old white Rambler station wagon and took a trip to New York for the World's Fair, with stops all along the East Coast and D.C. We stayed in a hotel that had little Indian tepee tents. Sadly, that was one of the photo albums that got almost ruined, but there were a few fun mementos from the trip I was on but of which I have no recollection.

This was an intensely emotional journey for me, looking at the photos of my entire family who lived, kept a bunch of stuff, and died. I remember seeing these photos, hearing the stories. I enjoyed looking at the scrapbook from my grandmother's retirement after 31 years with the Louisiana Employment Agency and Grandpa's 45 years with the telephone company. 

I loved seeing the young ladies from the 1920s and a bunch of Grannie's beaus, along with her completely filled dance cards. (I have no idea who this beautiful young woman was.)

A few leftover tickets from our trip to Disneyland. 

Old physician's tools, including a very scary-looking primitive syringe. (I donated these to my own doctor, who has a display case with other similar items.)

Photos of my grandparents' house when they first bought it, with the white fence and rose-covered trellises at the end of the driveway.

My sister's high school yearbooks from the 1960s.

It was a wonderful walk down memory lane.

But here's where some of you are going to disown me....

While I did keep quite a bit of it, along with the trunk, I threw a lot of it away. I had to throw away the check registers and bills and cards and letters, along with many of the photos of people who have long gone and I never knew. 

 I have already carried on the family trait enough with my own treasure trove of stuff -- keepsakes, high school scrapbooks, things from my college years, my wedding. 

Then I became a mom. So now I have trunks and boxes of her stuff, none of which she seems to want.

Then my mama died and left me a bunch of her stuff. And a lot of her stuff was stuff that had previously been her mama's stuff, and her grandmother's stuff, and her great-grandmother's stuff.

It has gotten to the point where I need my own museum!

And someday in the not too distant future, my adopted daughter and my step-children, who have no connection to any of these people or any of their stuff are going to have to go through all of it. And they won't know what to do with it either. None of it is really worth anything (I don't think). It's all just memories at this point. And yes, some of those are priceless. 

But mostly, it's just other people's stuff. 

My family supported education!

Grandpa's retirement gift from the telephone company.

The bill for my mother's birth at St. Mary's Hospital in Patterson. 

 

My daughter's wedding

My daughter's wedding took place on a warm, humid night in June, in the courtyard of a unique little venue that once was a small town bank. 

The mother of the groom and I spent many sweaty hours trying to bring my daughter's vision to life, strategically placing silk flowers, votive candles, and bud vases. It was a simple celebration for a young couple just starting out, with one set of parents who are retirees. There was a budget.

She was just stunning in her sparkling white dress and veil, her long jet black hair in soft waves around her face. I had seen her in her dress numerous times since it arrived at our door via UPS, but seeing her all put together with hair and makeup done to perfection just took my breath away. It was the first time I cried.

The groom was handsome -- hot -- in his tuxedo. So was her dad. I mean ... June. Courtyard. Louisiana summer. Hot. 

They didn't invite a bunch of people they didn't know to this celebration. None of mom's or dad's old work friends, nor distant relatives they never see or hear from. They wanted to be surrounded by people they knew and loved. Family. Friends.

Her first mother, Gail, was under the weather but Lora's half-sister came. Her other sister caught the bouquet. Her nieces were the flower girls. I was her "Something Blue." Her Godparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and several members of her new family she has met only a few times made the trip from several points east and west.

It made me miss my own mama, my brother, and my sister.

But my best friend since the eighth grade was there, just as she was on the day Lora was born, when she surprised me and spent the day keeping me calm and sane as I held my new baby while her first mother watched. On this day, she held on to me when I cried while we watched my husband dance with his baby girl.

There wasn't much dancing, though -- it was much too hot - but there was a lot of love and hope and joy. Familiar faces gathered to celebrate this happy occasion -- my daughter's wedding. 

When adoptive parents receive a child from another woman, a lot of people boldly ask, "Why did she give her away?"

And I figured that one day my little girl would ask me the same question. I was ready.

I found a quote on the internet that I loved and latched on to for my reply: "She didn't give her away. She gave her to me." 

At my daughter's wedding, the minister, a friend of theirs, asked my husband Marty, "Who gives this woman in marriage?'

"My wife and I do," he replied.

And I thought of those words I used so often so long ago.

We didn't give her away. We gave her to Gavin. For safekeeping. To have and to hold. To love and to cherish. In sickness and in health. 

He did ask, so he better do it right. 

We trust him to take care of her, to make her happy, to see to her needs, to make sure she grows old in good health, to make sure she visits us once in a while.

Gail chose us to receive her child. 

Lora chose Gavin to receive ours. 

So now I have a son-in-law and a whole new set of in-laws/out-laws by marriage. We welcome them to our own crazy blended family of steps, halves, and adoptees. 

We know that every step our children take in their lives is really a step away from us. That makes us mamas proud, but it also makes us sad. 

My daughter's wedding was another step in her life's journey forward, even though it takes her another step away from me, from us. 

But now she has a partner by her side to make sure she gets there safely.