I remember when I was 16, seeing the cover of some magazine that featured Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.  Actually I don’t really remember if Wozniak was on the cover or not, all I remember is thinking that Steve Jobs is really cute!   I also remember thinking, wow, he’s just a few years older than me, so young to be so rich and successful.  And then, “I wonder if he has a girlfriend…”

Steve never became my real life boyfriend, but he’s always been my pretend techno-geek boyfriend.  I’ve always had a crush on him, I’ve always had a thang for smart geeky guys.

Steve changed the world in many ways, not the least of which, he showed the world that geeks can be hot and that being a geek can be a cool thing.

But the biggest way he changed the world is in how we communicate and stay connected, how we learn and how we process creativity.

When the news broke yesterday that Steve Jobs had died, I read different reports on his life and what various people had to say about him. They talked about all he had accomplished and how he changed the world with his products.  And it’s true, because of the products he envisioned and brought to market, people can do more in less time, be more creative, share more, connect more, learn more.  I am one of those people.

I’ve always been a big fan of the “i” products and recently splurged on an iPad2 for Sean and I.  We love it with a deep intensity and use it all the time.  I have loaded it up with educational games for him and photography and design apps for me and just all kinds of fun and cool stuff.

Last night Sean and I went out for an early dinner at Chili’s.  He confiscated the cardboard coasters off several nearby tables so that we had a deck of about 20.  While we waited for our food we tried stacking the coasters in different configurations to see what kind of load-bearing structures we could make and how much weight they could bear.  Answer:  Triangle structures can bear the weight of a drinking straw – if you hold your breath and no one bumps the table. When we got bored with that, we divided up the coasters.  I asked him spelling and math questions and if he answered right, he got one of my cards; if he answered wrong, I took one of his cards.  Very low tech, but fun for geeky geeks like us and just a tad educational.  But most importantly, we were engaged.

As Sean and I were playing our silly made-up coaster games, I noticed a mom and little girl in the booth across the way.  The mom was staring into her iPhone and the little girl was watching something on her iPad, both bathed in the glow of their devices, a separation of less than two feet, but worlds apart.  I am not making a judgment here, just an observation. I realize there are many many reasons why a mom might need to decompress and veg out and that I have no idea what she’s dealing with.  But I will say that AD and I have taken note of how often we see this when we go out, families out to eat together, but not together – silent and zombie-like, the face and spirit of each lit up by their personal device.

I thought about Steve Jobs and how everyone is talking about how he changed the way we live for the better, that we are better connected than ever.  But, I have to wonder, if perhaps in other ways, we are not changed for the better, if our beloved devices are more of a wedge than a bridge, if we are not more connected than ever, but more disconnected than ever.

What do you think?

* * *
Addendum:  Found this post along the same lines from Jon Acuff who writes Stuff Christians Like: http://www.jonacuff.com/blog/how-to-improve-your-marriage-instantly/

Hands down, my favorite thing about first grade is walking to school.

Although I love our car time, it’s really nice to not have to get in the car of a morning as we have for the past several years.  Seeing the world through the car window is one thing, but being able to stop and examine a spider web or a willy worm or the perfect yellow leaf is a deeper richer experience that engages all of the senses and not just the eyes.  And what I especially admire about Sean is that he always seems to be tapped into the sensory data.  He has an acute awareness of that which is invisible to most.  The other day as we walked under the trees that line the sidewalk, he turned to me and said, “Mom, I just love the sound of leaves crunching underfoot, don’t you?”  Indeed, I do now.

Most days, AD will join Sean and me on our half-mile walk to school.  There are a few other families in the neighborhood who walk to school occasionally, but for the most part we have the sidewalk to ourselves.

When I was growing up, I never had the sidewalk to myself.  Everyone walked to school and there were plenty of us.  No one’s mom drove them to school.  No one’s mom or (gasp!) dad walked them to school.  Mom kicked us out the door, sometimes before the sun was even up, rain or shine, sleet or snow, and we joined up with the passing human train of children heading south towards school.  The older boys, who were too cool to walk, rode their bikes.  They would blaze up behind us hollering something like, “Watch out! No breaks!”  All the girls would scream and scramble off the sidewalk just before they slammed on their brakes leaving behind a screeching black skid mark three-feet long.  Then they would ride off laughing and popping wheelies with smug satisfaction.

After the long, long, very long walk to the end of the street, about 200 yards, we would have to cross a busy two-lane road. Sometimes there was a crossing guard, but usually not.  We were street-savvy Catholic school kids though, so if there wasn’t a car within 20-feet either direction, or if we didn’t think they were coming too fast, we’d bolt across.

Beyond the busy road lies a set of train tracks.  About 85% of the time, a train would be sitting on the tracks.  Just sitting.  So then a decision had to be made: Would it be better to risk death by crawling under the train or risk the wrath of Sister Mary Somebody for being late.  Always, we crawled under the train.  If you got your shoe caught on the track and got your leg cut off, as legend had it had happened to some girl whose name no one ever knew, then at least you’d have a good excuse and you could be certain that even Sister probably wouldn’t whack the hands of an amputee.

Once you made it past the train tracks, then came real danger.  Then you had to walk past a rat hole of a doughnut shop.  And my oh my, the smell of fresh baked doughnuts on a cold Midwest morning could lead a girl into temptation.  I never had the 20 cents it took to buy a doughnut and therefore never had any hope of getting a doughnut, but my saliva glands never gave up hope.  To make matters more unjust, my brother Jim who always seemed to have money, would get one.  I’d see his bike leaned up against the building and when I looked in the windows, sure enough there he’d be sitting at the counter eating a doughnut.

On the walk home from school, we’d go the reverse route; past the doughnut shop, across the busy road and under the train, but on the way back we’d traverse a fairly steep ditch just on the other side of the tracks.  The ditch was home to unsavory creatures like chiggers and cockle burs that would stick to your socks and shoe laces.  On the other side of the ditch was an old-timey garage that had a Dr. Pepper machine inside and one of those 10-2-4 signs.  Sometimes four or five of us would manage to scrape up 15 cents among us and we’d go in and buy an Orange Nehi or a Dr. Pepper out of the soda machine.  And when the cap was popped, oh the sound!  ChhSsshAAAaaah! — the sound of impending pleasure.  The bottle would come out of the machine so cold that it had frost on the outside and the soda was actually icy.  We’d each take a swig and I have to tell you, to this day, it remains the coldest most refreshing thing I could ever hope to put to my lips.

So yes, at the root of my love of walking to school is my own nostalgia.  I walked to school for eight years and have mostly fond memories.  And I want that for Sean. Of course his memories will be quite different, safer and more sanitary hopefully, but they will be his own.

My hope is that the memory of the three of us walking to school will burrow somewhere deep into his brain and return to warm his heart long after my bones have returned to the earth.  And maybe when he thinks back on these days of walking to school he will be reminded not just of the how the leaves crunched underfoot or of some silly or dangerous thing he did, but how much his mommy and daddy delighted in him.

* * * * *

Another walking home story, this one involving a pumpkin.

Sean begins kindergarten shortly after Labor Day. And like every other mother in America who is sending a child off to kindergarten, I can’t believe this day has arrived so quickly. It seems like just yesterday that we found out we were expecting.

I guess I should be reflecting on the past five years and how they have slipped away so quickly, but what I find myself thinking about is how the past 45 years have slipped away so quickly.

It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was in kindergarten.  When I look at my kindergarten class picture, I can name nearly every student, the teacher and even the school principal.  I don’t think I’ve ever forgotten one single detail of my life, which in many ways is unfortunate, because there are many events which would best be forgotten.

Here is everything I remember about kindergarten:

I was in the afternoon class.  There were 30 kids in my class and one teacher — no aide like they have now.  The teacher’s name, God bless her real good, was Mrs. Kelly. According to the class picture, she had a first name and it started with “B” but no one ever knew what it was.

Mrs. Kelly was probably about 25 or 30, but in her picture she looks much older.  In 1965 everyone looked about 20 yeas older than they actually were. That was the style. I remember one time I called her “mom” by mistake and I thought I would die.

In the spring, Mrs. Kelly took the entire class on a walking field trip to the IGA which was half a block from school. We had to cross a set of defunct railroad tracks and a busy two-lane road to get to the store.  And just now I’m trying to imagine doing that with 30 5-year-olds and it gives me the shivers.

For reasons unknown, just before we got to the railroad tracks, Jean Ann D. freaked out and tried to run away.  Mrs. Kelly sprinted after her and chased her down.  I could not believe my eyes.  I was a compliant child and it would never have occurred to me to do something like that.  I distinctly remember wondering why on earth would anyone do such a crazy thing? Who doesn’t want to go to the grocery store?  When we got to the grocery store, the store manager opened a box of Capt’n Crunch and let everyone have a handful of cereal.    That pivotal moment cemented my deep and abiding love for Capt’n Crunch.

Mrs. Kelly broke her leg during the school year (maybe chasing after Jean Ann) and so she sometimes sat in the front of the class with her foot in a cast resting on a chair. She read “Make Way for Ducklings” and  “Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel” – still two of my favorite children stories.  I liked the way she held the books out to the side while she read so we could see the pictures.

One time Mrs. Kelly called me to the front of the room and pulled me up on her lap and felt my forehead.  She said I looked  like I didn’t feel well.   I had a fever and she called my dad to come and get me.  It made me feel special to sit in her lap.  I took note of it because I don’t think other than that one time, she knew I was in the class — not too surprising given the class size and the fact that I didn’t do anything crazy like run away.

One time Mrs. Kelly brought out a box of percussion musical instruments. Everyone picked one and we all marched around the room banging on whatever lame instrument we managed to grab.  I wanted the triangle, but never got it and I certainly never got the tambourine, even after Mrs. Kelly made everyone trade instruments with someone else.  I remember feeling mighty ridiculous marching around the room banging two sticks together.  Consequently, I never took band.

There was a little pretend grocery store set up in the classroom and sometimes we would get to play grocery store, my most absolute favorite activity.  I loved the tiny toy cash register. Everyone wanted to be the cashier. For many years thereafter, it was my dream to be a cashier.

One time just as the bell rang and the class was being dismissed, my boyfriend Jerry got a nose bleed.  The teacher had him lie down on the floor with his head tilted back.  All the students ran out of the room to go home, even the teacher was out in the hall.  Jerry started crying so I turned back and stayed with him in the empty classroom, kneeling down beside him as globs of blood dripped out of his nose and down the side of his face.  I was a compassionate angel of mercy even in those days.

One day, my dad was late picking me up from school.  All the other kids had gone home and I was the last one left. The school was eerily quiet and I was beginning to get concerned.  In those days, I thought a lot about becoming an orphan and made plans about what I would do if I became an orphan.  Once I heard the word orphan and learned what it meant, I could not think of anything else. As I waited for my dad, who might not be coming for me, I imagined my exotic life in an orphanage.  As I waited,  I didn’t cry, because it would have taken more than being orphaned to make me cry. Nonetheless, I was relieved to see him when he finally showed up.

My dad took me to school every day in his car, known as Clunker #2, which he had hand painted primer gray.  And every day before school, and I do mean every single day, he fixed me a boiled hotdog which he impaled with a fork and served up with a splotch of ketchup on a plate.  After a nutritious gourmet lunch, I would crawl up onto the bench seat of Clunker #2 beside my dad while he drove me to school. Because I was fiercely independent, I always jumped out and ran into the school by myself, never looking back.

The year I was three, I got a maid’s outfit for Christmas which included an apron, a hat and all the tools of the trade. One day I decided that I should like to wear the maid’s outfit to school.  Dad put his foot down on that one.  I threw a fit, but he stood firm and sent me back to my room to change. That was one of the few times in my life that my dad has said no to me.

Everyday before getting in the car to go to school, dad would make some clumsy attempt to make my course thick dry frizzy bad hair presentable.  He never succeeded, but he will certainly get a star in his crown for trying.

Jeannie S. wore a leg brace. Her parents owned a gas station.  Billy R. had braces on both legs and some sort of medical problem and my mom would have long telephone chats with his mom.  Brian M. had a spot on the middle of his nose and it was terribly cute.  Laura G. wasn’t quite right and was known to bite.  Rhonda D. used to roll up on her back during nap time and pull her panties down to her knees and then pull them back up as she rolled back  — another thing that would have never occurred to me to do.  There was so many new things to learn at school.   Cassie B. was the cutest girl in the whole class. She was also the cutest girl in high school.

One day, towards the end of the school year, my mom let me walk the 3/4  mile home with Jerry.  I don’t know if one of the moms followed us at a discreet distance, but not in ten million years would I let my 5-year-old walk a mile home down a busy road. Not in twenty million years.  It was a different time.

After graduating kindergarten, 13 of us went on to Catholic grade school together through 8^th grade and then we joined up again with most of the rest of the class in high school.

I still get together with Jerry and some of the other “kids” every couple of years and have dinner and wax nostalgic.  There’s something kind of cool about getting together with  people who share a history, people who are rooted in the same soil.

Sean is a lot like me. He compliant, forgets nothing and loves to play grocery store. In a week, he’ll begin making his own kindergarten memories and he’ll meet people with whom he’ll share a certain history.

And maybe if he’s really lucky, when he’s my age, he’ll still be connected to a few folks who occupied the same sweet kindergarten time and space.

Back in the late 70s, after I graduated from high school, I worked for an insurance company whose offices are on the edge of a small historical downtown area.

The particular building that I worked in occupied one city block and was six stories tall, and having been built in the post-modern era, it had windows all the way around, top to bottom, which meant you could see all there was to see. Which wasn’t a whole lot.

However, on most days you could look out the windows and see a middle-aged woman wearing a tattered wedding dress hurrying down the sidewalk.  She always walked briskly and with purpose as though she were late for her own wedding, her long dingy veil trailing behind her, floating in the wake of her own pungent breeze.  It was a haunting image, and oddly beautiful in a bizarre sort of way, and one that remains vivid in my mind almost 30 years later.

She was known among those who worked in the building as The Bride Lady.  Everyone had seen The Bride Lady from the windows but no one seemed to know anything about her, what her name was, where she lived or how she became a perpetual bride.

In all the years I worked in that building and walked in and out and around that building, I never once encountered her face to face. Like a ghost, she just sort of seemed to appear on one end of the sidewalk in a cloud of wedding finery and then seconds later, disappear at the other end. I never saw her anywhere else but from the windows of that building.

I have not thought of The Bride Lady for a long time, but today as I was driving, I saw a dirty and fraying piece of delicate fabric that had caught on a fence post. It was captivating the way it would lift and waltz in the breeze and then suddenly go limp and rest when the wind disappeared.  There was something about the way the fraying fabric floated and fluttered in the breeze that made me think of The Bride Lady and her veil.

From six stories up, I was afforded the luxury of participating in her fantastical reality without the burden of confronting her humanity.  From where I stood I did not have to consider that she had unmet needs or a name and a mother — I could simply enjoy the romantic and somewhat comedic notion of a bride speed walking to her wedding.

From six stories up, she wasn’t crazy and homeless, missing teeth and sharply aromatic.

From six stories up, she was a beautiful bride in a hurry to meet her groom.

I often wonder what ever happened to The Bride Lady, if maybe somehow in her fantastical crazy world, she did live happily ever after.

Or maybe that only happens six stories up.

Back in the early 80s, when I was about 23, I landed this great job where I traveled around the country about 80% of the time teaching people how to use their new phones.

It was a great job for a young single gal.  I traveled to many of the major companies in most of the major cities, and four times a day, twice in the morning and twice in the afternoon, I gave 30-40 minute presentations on how to use the new phone system.  Basically I worked four hours a day and was done by 3:30. Suh-weeet!

The first time I went on a training trip, I went with this older lady named Connie to a large aerospace concern out on Long Island.  And by older lady, I mean that she was the same age I am now.  That hurt just a little to write that last sentence.

She gave the first two morning presentations while I observed and then I was to give the afternoon presentations.

That afternoon, in my first group were about twelve not easily amused, scowling executives extremely serious about the millions of dollars they had just invested in their new phone system.  And little old blond, wet behind the ears, uneducated me was there to teach them how to use it. I’m sure the sight of me in my $20 polyester business suit inspired all due confidence.

I knew my material. I had it memorized. I knew the phones and I knew the system and how they worked inside and out. Yet I was nervous. Connie told me to relax and take a few deep breaths and that I would do great.

I stood up to make my way to the front of the room.  I turned and looked down at her hoping for something, but I didn’t know what, maybe her calm and poise, maybe that she could somehow gift that to me.  I also hoped that a meteorite might hit the building in the next 5 seconds.  But it didn’t, so I just stood there looking at her.  She looked back at me. And blinked a few times.  Finally she made a sweeping motion with both of her hands. “Go,” she said.

So I turned and I went.

I went to the front of the room.  I stood in front of a dozen scowling Ernest Borgnines, all with their arms crossed across their fat executive bellies, some clenching unlit cigars between their teeth, all waiting for me to confirm for them that they had not wasted their company’s money on my phone system.

I swallowed hard with great difficulty.  I seemed to have no saliva.  I opened my mouth to speak and no words issued forth. Not one.

I opened my mouth again, hoping to hear the sound of my voice, hoping to hear “Hi. My name is…” But all that came out was a sad, pathetically tiny squeak.

I remembered that Connie had told me to take a few deep breaths before I started, so I did. And then I took another.

And then another.

And then I couldn’t stop myself and I began to hyperventilate.  And now instead of making a tiny squeaky kitten sound, I was making an unpleasant sound that I liken to the sound that the last of the water makes as it is being sucked down the bathtub drain.  Not the sound you want to hear in a conference room.

As I’m making the bathtub sucking sound, unhappy, scowling, and now, slightly alarmed executive faces stare back at me.

My heart was beating so hard, I could feel it in my throat.   I looked down and saw my right foot thumping like a rabbit.  My mind sent my foot a message to cut it out, but my heart was in my throat and so the message did not get past my neck.  And the fact that my heart was in my throat was probably all that stood in the way of me throwing up. So I count that as a blessing.

Somehow, I do not know how, I managed to pull it together.  I got through my 30 minute presentation. It was not great, but I got through it without throwing up or fainting and at that point, that was all that mattered.

I’ve always suspected that the executives went home to their wives that night and told them about how in the conference room at work that day was the most ridiculous specimen of a human they ever saw.

After my presentation, I sat down and the first thought I had was, “I can’t WAIT to do that again!”

It was terrifying, but it was also exhilarating to go into that dark tunnel and come out the other side. And I wanted to do it again.

The next time was a little better, I didn’t hyperventilate, as much, and the time after that it was a little better. By the second week, I could give those presentations in my sleep. Over the next several years I went all over the country giving the good news.  You’ve got new phones!  And I’m here to teach you how to use them!

Most of the time, the response was, “I like the old phones. What was wrong with the old phones? I know how to use the old phones. I don’t like the new phones.”

I gave presentations to groups of 3 and groups of 20 and groups of 100 or more.  And I became very comfortable with public speaking.

But that was 20 years ago, and now I’m back to square one again.

This past weekend, I was in North Carolina at the She Speaks conference to relearn how to move through that dark tunnel to square two.

This time around, I’ve got a different kind of good news.

One summer day, when I was about four-years-old, I sat in the front seat of the grocery cart as my mom did her shopping.  As she wheeled the cart around the corner, there on the end cap was a giant cardboard cutout of a little girl whose panties were being pulled away by a frisky little dog.  Her backside was exposed for all the world and the local grocery shoppers to see.  And I was mortified.

I clapped one hand over my mouth in disbelief and pointed at the offending image in horror with the other.  I was aghast.  I remember my mom laughing, amused at my reaction.

I think it is around this age that self-awareness and a sense of proprietary kicks in because I remember being embarrassed, for the little girl in the ad and for me. I remember feeling that I had seen something that shouldn’t be seen. 

You probably already know that the ad to which I am referring is the sweet and innocent Coppertone ad from the 1960s.

 But oh the times, how they are a changin’.

Last week, Sean and I were in Sam’s. He was not in a cart but walking along side me down the aisle with the books and magazines when all of a sudden we rounded an end cap and he was aghast.  He stopped dead in his tracks.  He clapped one hand over his mouth and pointed with the other at the cover of GQ magazine which was right at his eye level.

On the cover of the magazine was not a sweet little toddler and a frisky dog, but Gisele Bundchen who is sitting on a bed, looking a little disheveled and wearing a top of some sort, but nothing else. While the cover was not especially graphic, it was not lost on my son that he was seeing something that shouldn’t be seen.

“Mommy!” Sean whispered-shrieked, “Where are her underpants?”

I just didn’t really know what to say, and when that happens, I just go with the truth.

“I don’t know Sean, but she should put some on, don’t you think?”

We kept moving along and luckily he was quickly distracted by the next thing that caught his eye, and we did not have to continue that conversation.  For now.

I’m getting old, I know that, but I long for the days of Camelot when the raciest thing in the grocery store was the Coppertone girl.

True story.

Back in the early 90s, I attended a taping of a television sports talk show featuring Troy Aikman and some other sports caster type fellows whose names I don’t remember. I know nothing about football and it would not even be possible for me to care less about football than I already do. Yet there I was with Troy and the boys talkin’ football.

For those few of you who know even less about football than I do and need clarification before I go on, Troy Aikman was the quarterback for the Dallas Cowboys football team back in the day when Wham was popular.  Don’t ask me what a quarterback is. It’s beyond my scope. 

At any rate, I found myself at the taping of this local television sports show. The set was designed like a sports bar, ala Cheers, with Troy and the sports caster guys sitting at the bar, having a faux few and discussing football like it was foreign policy or something of real importance.  I, along with a number of other people, were seated at small tables like bar patrons, all of whom happen to be eavesdropping on Troy like he was E.F.Hutton.

At one point in the taping, Troy was to look in the camera and read a sentence off the cue card. I don’t remember exactly what the sentence was that he read, but it was something like “And we’ll be right back.”

And so Troy read the sentence, albeit a little stilted, and everyone applauded mightily.

Except for me who involuntarily laughed and said dryly, and apparently a little too loudly, “Oh boy.  He can read.”

And then Troy turned and shot laser beams out of his eyes at me, singeing my eyelashes just a little.

Now, two things here.  I didn’t really mean it the way it came out.  It just struck me odd that we were applauding a college graduate for reading a sentence that any second-grader could read. It simply amused me.

The second thing is that I hadn’t really intended to say that outside of my head. Sometimes there is a mix-up between my tongue and my brain and that happens – the tongue does not get the memo that the message is proprietary, for internal distribution only.  Sometimes my brain threatens to fire my tongue, but the tongue has tenure and so it’s a problem. (See James 3:1-9) 

So, all that to say, “Sorry Troy. I think you’re swell. And a great reader too.”

It’s never too late to say you’re sorry and just now I really needed to get that off my chest.

I was going through a box of jewelry the other day when I came across a matching set of pearl earrings and a single pearl drop necklace that I had stashed away years ago.   I realized, as I pulled them from their velvet hiding place, that I have had them for 30 years.  How could that be? I don’t even think of myself as being 30-years-old.

I ran my fingers along the delicate silver chain of the necklace.  I pulled up my hair and fastened the clasp behind my neck.  I put on the earrings and looked in the mirror.  I turned my head from side to side.  The small pinkish pearl orbs were as pretty as the day I first laid eyes on them, even if I was not.  They were a gift from my high school sweetheart Bob, with whom I was madly in love and dated for several years.  He had worked all winter chopping and selling firewood to buy them for me for my 18th birthday. 

It was some years later, after we had both moved on with our lives, that I realized that I was as much in love with Bob’s family as I was with Bob.  His mother LaWanda was so good and so kind to me. She was like a mother to me and I enjoyed her company tremendously.  For those few years that we dated, I spent a lot of time just hanging out at their house and being a part of their family.  

One warm and humid spring morning, Bob broke up with me.  And then he got in his truck and drove off.  The break up was not unexpected.  The anvil falling from the sky had cast its long black shadow upon me long before that spring day.  I was not surprised, but I was crushed all the same.

I sat on the front steps of his parent’s house and sobbed until I could no longer distinguish between the throbbing of my head and the throbbing of my heart.  Every cell in my body ached and grieved.  Deep down I knew it was for the best, but it was a chapter in my life I did not want to close.  LaWanda came out of the house and sat down beside me as I wept.  She wrapped me up in her arms and cried with me.  She told me that I was better off without him.  Yes, but would I be better off without her?  No, not really and I never was. Bob, I eventually got over.  LaWanda, I never did.   

Eventually I dried my tears and moved on with my life.  Several years later, I moved to Texas taking the pearls with me.  Whenever I went home to Illinois for a visit, I always stopped by to see LaWanda. It was always awkward driving up that familiar blacktop driveway, hoping to see Bob and hoping not to see Bob.  But then she would invite me into her house and it was like I was 18 again.  We’d sit side-by-side on her sofa, drink iced tea and laugh and talk about everything but Bob. 

For the next 20 years, I sent her a Christmas card and she sent me one too. She always wrote I hope you are happy, Love LaWanda.  One year, the Christmas card I sent was returned. Not At This Address an unfamiliar hand had scrawled across the envelope.  I found out later that she had died.  No one had told me.  My heart broke all over again.

I thought of all of these things as I took the pearls off and put them back to sleep in their velvet bed.  I snapped the lid shut as if that somehow provided closure.  I pulled the lid up again and took one long last look.  I made a wish that someday Sean will give them to a girl who will love me as much as I loved LaWanda.

And then I closed the lid one last time and put them away for another 15 or 20 years.