wisdom from my Mom and Dad - part 1

Dad - "Why would anyone want to look younger anyway? Just look at all these beautiful lines." He holds up his big, beautiful, lined hands and admires them.

Mom - "Sure there's probably some more stuff that I could work on, but I think, hey, at my age, I've done enough. Now I'm just going to enjoy every minute I'm alive."

Dad - "If you can do something you love and get paid for it, you'll be the happiest person alive."

Mom - "I'm happy right now, very peaceful and content. I wish I'd figured that out years ago."

Dad - "You've got to eat a peck of dirt." (in reference to just DOING stuff, not worrying about cleaning everything, or getting dirty)

And so it goes. I'm almost done with the editing part of Dress Gray - it's absolutely fascinating reading, and I'm really proud of the way I can fit the pictures and articles and letters with the text. Sheyna found some fabulous archival pictures to use, so that inspired me to go on the West Point website and find some more pictures to use. This book project is so much more than a book project - it's Dad's heritage, it's me showing my love for Mom and Dad, it's learning about another era, plus it's interesting. I never really had an appreciation for Dad going to West Point, but the more I read about it, he was the cream of the crop, and even graduated 54th out of a class of 1000. Wow - that's something, isn't it? And he's my dad. And he loves Mom, and Mom's "pretty pro and spoony," to quote Dad. I've started a blog for the book, but it isn't really up and running quite yet - I'll let you know when it is.

Also, we've got some BIG BIG news at our house, but we won't issue the press release until tomorrow, so I'll have to break the news then. But I promise you'll be the first to know...