The Family's Senior Moments... Aunt Dolly.

When she was born on June 8, 1913, the baby was so tiny she looked like a doll. My grandmother called her Eleanor, quite possibly Eleanora, but no one is sure about that last vowel tacked onto her name. That name didn't matter much because for the rest of her life, she would be known as Dolly. Always petite, Dolly was my grandfather's favorite child... Grandpa quickly forgot how disappointed he was at her birth because he had expected another boy. One look at his new daughter's tiny little face and minuscule fingers and toes, and he was head over heels with this little doll-baby of his.

Dolly was the child who helped everyone, who was right there when needed as my grandparents continued to have children. Over the years, Grandpa got his wish for more boys, Grandma succeeded in having more girls, but Dolly was somehow special. There was an innate quality about her... she made you pay attention to her without being demanding. On the contrary, she wanted everyone's attention so she would know what they needed her to do for them. She helped my grandmother raise the babies, she learned how to cook my grandfather's favorite meals. She was just there, always there, for everyone... and that trait continued for the rest of her life.

My generation of cousins grew up in the 1950s and 1960s..... Aunt Dolly was 39 when I was born. The prime of her life, and we all benefited from it. Before me and my cousins came along, Aunt Dolly had gotten married to the love of her life, as she called him. She lived with him in California.... they were so happy, she always said. But then she caught him with another woman and Dolly was devastated. Absolutely crushed. She moved back to the family home in New York, had the marriage annulled, and never looked back. She never said one bad word about her ex-husband, only to tell her sisters that he had made a mistake that she knew she couldn't forgive, much less forget. If someone asked her if she would ever get married again, her answer was "I married the right man years ago, but it turned out wrong and now I'm fine the way I am, thank you."

Aunt Dolly's life was ours, all ours. She never dated again, never re-married. We, us cousins, were her children. And she loved all of us so much that each and every one of us was certain that we were her favorite, that we (each of us) were the center of her world, the most important person in her universe. And we all believed that, for all of our days and years with her.

Aunt Dolly passed away yesterday. She was 106. The last surviving child of my paternal grandparents. For all of her life, Aunt Dolly was happy, healthy, resourceful, helpful, attentive to a fault... her family was indeed her entire life. To each of my generation of cousins, she was our best friend, our confidant, our second mother, our protector, our guardian, our muse, our playmate, our one-and-only and one-of-a-kind Aunt Dolly.  She taught us table manners and social skills. She taught us to respect the family name and the legacy that began with our grandparents sailing across the ocean on a ship with nothing but the clothes on their backs and a small satchel. They were searching for the American Dream and they found it... through hard work and sacrifice and 'the grace of God,' as Aunt Dolly always said.

Aunt Dolly was beautiful, patient and kind, generous and loving, she was everything to all of us. And after having had her in the family for so many years, it seems impossible to even begin to understand the world of this family without her.

I found that I couldn't cry, or even be sad, when I got the phone call yesterday about her passing. After all, at 106 years of age, even as healthy as she always was, a body just gets tired. And Aunt Dolly had been very tired this past couple of weeks, going so far as to voice those words out loud. I want to believe in life after death. I want to believe that Aunt Dolly is now with her sisters and brothers... Jaye, Angela, Edie, Tony, Mino, Larry, Jimmy, and my dad Angelino. And, of course, my grandparents. In my mind's eye, I see them all sitting around a heavenly table... macaroni and meatballs, salad and nuts and bread and Italian pastries... and as everyone sits and is enjoying their meal together, my Aunt Dolly is hovering behind them all, asking them if they need more gravy or macaroni... another meatball... one more slice of bread... a cannoli...

I cannot stress how beautiful Aunt Dolly was... her heart was huge, her personality was electric, her manners were proper, her style was classic, and she was so graceful in her movements. No one could find fault with this unimaginable creation of my grandparents. How did we all get so lucky to have her in our lives for so long? How was it even possible to imagine that she eventually wouldn't be there for us, to correct us when we were wrong, to console us when we were sad, to make us laugh when we needed it, and to make us proud to be part of our family. "You're a LaConte!" she would tell us... "Never forget that!!"

And if we did, over the years, forget who we were and which family we came from, Aunt Dolly was always the first, the very first, to forgive. "No matter what... you're still a LaConte... you're still family."

And now, I'm crying. Aunt Dolly will be so very much missed by us all.

Saint Theresa

So there I was yesterday, checking my booth at the antique shop in town... dusting this, re-arranging that, taking out old stuff and adding new items. I'm in there every week doing the same routine to keep my displays from getting same-old/same-old.

I had some extra time yesterday so I decided to walk around the shop and look at the spaces and booths of the other dealers. I hadn't really done that since before Christmas and a little look-see was long past due.

And what did I find..... a very old and very pretty painting of Saint Theresa which was framed in black walnut. The frame alone was outstanding, but the picture just took my breath away because it was so unexpected. Saint Theresa was my dad's favorite saint... he prayed to her all the time, bought countless medals and cards of this saint for everyone in the family, and he swore for years that Saint Theresa got him through World War II without so much as a scratch (not counting some very nice claw marks from a mama cat whose kittens my dad saved from a bucket that had overturned much too close to an open well somewhere in France).

I stared at the painting of Saint Theresa.... very poignant, very pretty and serene... priced at $36... did I want to spent over thirty dollars on such a picture? Not really... I'm more spiritual than religious, and I don't feel the need for crosses and pictures of the saints. But really... Saint Theresa.... I could hear daddy whispering in my ear.... "Thirty-six dollars? You're kidding me, right? You're going to leave that picture there?!"

I walked away from the painting and proceeded to look at all the booths of the other dealers... then came back to Saint Theresa.  Very peaceful expression on her face.... bits of glitter here and there on the picture... an open book near her hands... a little angel up in the sky with a sparkling halo... daddy's favorite saint.

I took the picture off the wall and brought it up front to pay for it.  Saint Theresa now hangs on the wall of my sitting room, over a pink velvet sofa. She looks quite comfortable and right-at-home, as if she's been there forever.  If my dad were still alive and in this house, he would be down on his knees in front of that painting, saying prayer after prayer after prayer, and then kissing the gold Saint Theresa medal he always wore around his neck.

Now.... today. This afternoon when the ladies came for crafts.... JAS brought boxes of iridescent glass ornaments for our latest project:  fill the ornaments with keepsake or fun items and then bring them back next week or the week after and show everyone our finished ornament.  I had decided to go through the old letters that my dad had sent me over the years. My thought was to cut out different parts of each letter and then roll them up and put them into the ornament. Daddy's handwriting was spectacularly ornate (more like calligraphy than the old 'Palmer' method) and the result would be a very special ornament which would preserve important parts of his letters and then I could discard the sentences regarding weather, lottery tickets, card games, Texas shrimp, New York pizza, and his next-door neighbors.

I went through my dad's letters tonight... I cut out the lines that said "Dear Larrie" and "Love always, Dad" and the lines with our Texas addresses written on the envelopes. There were special lines that said "I will always love you" and "To my dear daughter Larrie."  In one particular envelope, my dad had written "Thank you for the article about Saint Theresa."  I remember that clearly.... one of the local churches had sacred relics on display that were said to have belonged to Saint Theresa. 'The Houston Chronicle' had printed a very long article about the items, along with photographs. After reading the story, I cut out the pages and mailed them up to my dad.

Now what are the chances... the day after buying that framed painting of Saint Theresa... I read through my dad's letters and find the note thanking me for that newspaper article and telling me about his belief that he "got through the War because of Saint Theresa."

When I was looking though daddy's letters tonight, I was sitting at the little table in the breakfast room. When I got to that note about Saint Theresa, I went upstairs and stood in front of that framed print and read that particular letter out loud.  No one is home at the moment but me.... so reading aloud a letter written nearly twenty years ago by my father was a bit ludicrous.

But maybe not. Quite possibly, Saint Theresa heard me. Quite probably, and I choose to believe this, daddy heard me as well.

Pennies From Heaven

I wish I had saved all of those pennies. Bright and shiny... all of them looking so new, as if they'd been just minted and untouched by hundreds of hands as they passed from pocket to cash register and back to someone else's pocket and then on to another cash register.

The pennies were found in parking lots, always next to the driver's side of my car. All of them, as I've said, looking brand new, and all of them stamped with the date of the current year.

I found the last one this past Saturday, right on the ground by the door of my car. One could say that it was dropped there by the person getting into or out of the car parked on the left side of mine, but that wasn't possible the other day. I had parked next to one of those aisles which are reserved for the shopping carts, so there was no parked car to the left of mine.  I had put all of my groceries into the trunk and front seat of my car, and had just wheeled the shopping cart to that plastic-bumper protected aisle, and as I approached the driver's door of my car there was the penny, just waiting for me.

I picked it up and looked at the date. 2015. A bright copper penny, devoid of scratches or marks, a new penny. How many has it been now? Ten? Twelve? At least. I picked up that penny and could just about hear my dad singing that old song "Pennies From Heaven...."   He sang that song all the time when I was a kid, along with a bunch of other favorites of his. "When You Wish Upon a Star" was another of his favorites, and that song plays on my cell phone when it rings.

But the pennies.... a happy little coincidence, one would say.  But are they?

When I was in grade school, daddy and I would walk up to the corner to the candy store to buy a newspaper or a pack of Lucky Strikes (he smoked at the time, not giving it up till the late 1960s). As my dad opened up the package of cigarettes, I'd be opening up a little bag of M&Ms.... and I'd see daddy toss out pennies or nickels or dimes on the ground in front of the store.  The first time I saw him do that with the coins, I told him that he dropped some money on the sidewalk.

"I didn't drop it... I put it there.  Maybe some little kid will come by and pick up that nickel and he can buy himself some candy with it."  I thought that idea was so grand that I wanted to go back inside the store and watch from the window, so we could see the kid who found the money, and then see what kind of candy he would buy.

"That's not necessary," said my dad.... "We did the good deed.... we don't have to see who profits from it... it's good enough to know that someone will find the money and they'll pick it up if they need it."  And off we would go, back home with the newspaper, the Lucky Strikes, and the M&Ms.

When my dad was still alive, I'd occasionally see coins dropped in parking lots and on sidewalks. All of the coins were stained and dirty, as if they'd been there through rain storms and then were stepped on by dozens upon dozens of shoes. I never picked up those coins, but they did remind me of the pennies, nickels, and dimes that my dad tossed to the ground so many years ago in Queens.

About three months after daddy passed away in 2008, the first shiny penny appeared out of nowhere next to the driver's side of my car, right in the driveway of our house. Bright and shiny, as if it had never been touched. I picked it up and looked at the date... 2008.   That Christmas, I found another copper penny outside the supermarket... also bright and shiny new, dated 2008.... not a footprint on that penny even though the store was crowded with holiday shoppers and people had been going in and out of those doors all day.

With those first two pennies, I kept them in a little tray on my desk.... looking at them made me both happy and sad, and the song "Pennies From Heaven" would go through my mind in my father's voice. The memory of daddy singing that song got to be too sad, and I put the pennies into my purse and just used them for shopping.

By the time I found the sixth or seventh penny, I couldn't remember all the words to the song. All I could think of in my mind were the three words of the title.   And the other day, when I found this last bright and shiny copper penny, I was very sad because I can no longer hear my dad's voice in my mind.  I can tell you exactly how my dad always said hello to me when I called him on the phone, and I can remember word-for-word the particular way he would say good-bye after a phone conversation... but his voice.... where I used to hear his voice and his accent on certain words, and his laugh, that distinct voice memory is gone.  I can say daddy's words over and over in my mind, but I'm hearing my own voice, not my dad's.

I thought the sound of my father's voice would stay with me longer. Much longer. Like forever.

Pennies from heaven.  It's nice to think that the pennies I've found along the way were tossed there by my father... pennies for me to find, to remind me of his long-ago habit of dropping coins for little kids to find in front of the candy store....  a sweet reminder of one of his favorite songs. Bright and shining, as-new pennies that glowed copper in the sunlight, dropped down from heaven as a gift from my dad.

It's nice to think of those pennies in that way.  So much more promising than just a happy little coincidence.

Yesterday was Father's Day. Now that daddy is gone, Father's Day is just another Sunday.

Whitman's Chocolate

When I was growing up in the 1950s, no one bought a box of candy from a supermarket. Every neighborhood had a candy store that sold handmade chocolates by the box or by the piece. You could pick out your favorite chocolates which were displayed in a large glass case trimmed in wood or brass. The store owner would wrap up your selections in pretty papers appropriate to the particular season of the year, and off you would go with this precious box of delicious chocolates.

My dad loved Whitman's Chocolate, and their most popular box was their "Sampler," which gave about two dozen pieces of chocolate-covered nuts, caramel, fruit creams, and coconut clusters. In the center of the box was the Whitman's "Messenger Boy" which was a thin brick of chocolate molded in the shape of a little boy delivering a box of Whitman's Chocolates.

Whitman's was my dad's chocolate of choice, and he bought countless sampler boxes over the years... for the family, for the nuns at school, for friends at Christmas-time. "You can't go wrong with Whitman's, and who doesn't like good chocolate?" he would say.

My grandmother and my Aunt Dolly would save the sampler boxes when all the chocolate was gone. Grandma used the boxes for sewing supplies, and Aunt Dolly filled her share of the Whitman's boxes with card-making supplies and pretty ribbons. On a rainy day when I told my aunt that I had nothing to do, Aunt Dolly would hand me one or two of her "busy work" boxes and tell me "Go sit down and make me something."  Inside those yellow Whitman's boxes would be the fronts of pretty cards, scraps of ribbons, bits of silk flowers, tiny little charms from Cracker Jack.... and I'd sit there and make a unique paper creation that my aunt would cherish for years. I've had my own boxes of card-making supplies for years now, and spend many hours making cards, invitations, and place cards for family and friends.

When my dad walked into my grandmother's house with a box of Whitman's, he would open the box in front of my grandmother and say "Look at that... all perfect.... and doesn't it smell like good chocolate should?"  Daddy would let grandma take the first piece, which was almost always the little rectangular-shaped brick with the Messenger Boy imprinted on it. Grandma would eat it slowly, letting the chocolate melt in her mouth. "Buono, buono," she'd say when she was finished. "Good, good."  Daddy would ask her to take another and my grandmother's answer would always be the same. "One is enough for now."

Aunt Dolly always took one of the chocolate covered peanuts or a cashew cluster. Nuts covered in chocolate were her favorites. She would take a small knife and cut one of the clusters in half, savoring one half right then, saving the other half for after dinner. We all knew that if we saw half of a nut cluster in the Whitman's box, that half was my aunt's and not to be touched.

Uncle Mino was the chocolate gourmet of the house. He worked in Manhattan and had access to all sorts of private chocolate shops who made the chocolates on site and sold them for exorbitant prices. My uncle would go into one of those shops during his lunch-time walk around The City and buy one or two pieces at a time, only buying an entire box's worth of selections at Christmas-time. Being that Uncle Mino had tasted chocolate "from all over the world," he thought that the box of Whitman's was too mundane. "Fine," said my dad, "That leaves more Whitman's for the rest of us."

Sooner or later, though, the box of Whitman's would tempt Uncle Mino. He would open the box and peer into it, and then take a very thin fruit knife with an ivory handle so he could slice off an end of whichever chocolate he chose to try. The blade on that knife was very sharp, and he could make these tiny slices of chocolate that were less than one-quarter-of-an-inch thick. "Just enough to taste," my uncle would say. The problem was that my uncle and his knife-slicing would result in two of three of the Whitman's chocolates missing their chocolate-covered ends.

My dad would open the Whitman's box and say "My brother the chocolate surgeon must have been here! Just look at what he did to the Whitman's!"  More often than not, daddy would take the pieces that had already been cut by my uncle, so when the box was next opened, one wouldn't see cut-off ends on the selections.

In the mid 1960s after I'd started high school, a chocolate shop opened up right on the corner where Uncle Mino caught his bus for the ride to the train station. The shop sold Russell Stover's chocolates. During their first couple of weeks, the shop gave out free samples, and my uncle helped himself to more than a few of the chocolate-covered caramels and creams. When the store discontinued their free samples, Uncle Mino bought a box of his hand-selected favorites and brought them home for the family to taste.

And so began the Whitman/Stover competition in my grandmother's house. My dad swore by Whtiman's, "hands down," as he said. Uncle Mino said that Russell Stover's caramels were thicker and better than the Whitman's.  My dad's answer to that was "The caramel is so thick that it could pull a filling out of your tooth."  Both my grandmother and my Aunt Dolly refused to take sides. "They're both good," Aunt Dolly would say. Grandma would just look at her two sons and shake her head, telling them they should be grateful that they had extra money in their pockets to buy boxes of chocolate.

The Whitman/Stover battle went on for years... my Uncle Mino bringing home a box of Russell Stover's chocolate a day or two after my dad walked in with a box of Whitman's.  Uncle Mino would open both boxes and put them side by side, comparing the shapes and the selections. My dad would tell his brother "Keep that knife of yours away from my Whitman's... if you want to slice into chocolate, then do it to the Stover's."

My husband and I have traveled quite a lot over the past twenty-some years. We've tasted chocolates in countless US cities we've visited, and we've also had gourmet chocolates in Germany, The Netherlands, London, Canada, and Australia.  Each of the private chocolate shops were beautifully decorated and their glass-covered display counters held enticing selections of chocolates. A few years ago, one of the Houston museums hosted a World Chocolate Exhibit, and we got to taste and buy chocolates from all over the globe without leaving the state of Texas.

However.... when I give a box of chocolates as a gift, I always pick up a Sampler Box of Whitman's. That familiar yellow box just says 'family' to me, and brings back all those memories of Grandma choosing the little Messenger Boy piece, Uncle Mino slicing the ends off the caramels and creams, Aunt Dolly saving the nut clusters for herself, and daddy saying "You can't go wrong with Whitman's."

A few days ago, my husband surprised me with a box of Whitman's.  He didn't tell me that he'd bought it.... he just left it on a table in the TV room where I had made a small Christmas display of a few Santa figurines and an empty tin box of a vintage Whitman's Christmas Sampler.  When my eye caught sight of the yellow Whitman's box, my heart skipped half a beat because I immediately thought of my dad, and then of course realized that my husband had put the box of Whitman's there for me to find.

My dad passed away in 2008, but when I opened that box of Whitman's from my husband and took a bite of the little Messenger Boy piece, my eyes puddled up with tears because I could actually hear daddy's voice in my mind saying "You can't go wrong with Whitman's."

As I type this, there are just ten more days till Christmas. I tend to get sad and sappy around this time of the year. I have to remind myself to concentrate on the good memories and just breeze through the not-so-good memories of years past. That box of Whitman's sitting downstairs on the table... a very thoughtful surprise from my husband which has given me the gift of hearing daddy's voice in my mind once again. I hope the day never comes when I no longer remember the sound of my father's voice.

Dance, Ballerina, Dance...

The first time my dad brought me to Radio City Music Hall to see a movie and the Rockettes, I was enthralled with the huge theater, the larger-than-life movie screen, and the live stage show starring the Rockettes.  I don't even remember which movie was playing, but I do remember looking around the theater at all the seats, the lights, the plush wall-coverings, the huge balcony, and the perfectly spectacular sensation of just sitting there like a tiny bug in the middle of that huge and beautiful Music Hall.

After the movie was over, a gigantic organ floated up through the floor in the left-hand corner of the stage.... lights on the organ would change color as the music played... the organist flipped keys and pounded pedals and once in a while he would turn around towards the audience as if to say "How about that?! Did you like that?!"

And then the Rockettes.... dancing and stepping in unison, entering from both sides of the stage till they met in the middle into one long line of legs and sparkling costumes. How could you not love them? How could you not want to be one of them, especially if you were a little girl who was taking tap-dance and ballet lessons at the time?

I remember my dad asking me "Would you want to be one of the Rockettes when you're older? I could come here and watch you dance up on that stage."  The thought frightened me... dance up there in front of everyone in Radio City Music Hall?  What if I made a mistake? What if I kicked the wrong foot or raised the wrong arm?   My dad told me that if I practiced enough, I wouldn't make mistakes... and even if I did...... "So what? Do you think those girls up on that stage have never made a mistake?"

When the stage show was over, my dad and I went downstairs to the gift shop in the Music Hall..... dolls and games, dance shoes and porcelain figurines... all sorts of New York City souvenirs were lined up on glass shelves. "Let's get you something," said my dad.... "Pick something out."

I looked at all the possibilities.... my dad was pointing out a beautiful doll with a ballerina costume and dancing shoes..... there were stuffed animals and books and tea sets.  He was telling me to take my time, to not miss anything on the shelves, to make a good choice.

And that's when I saw the teapot.... not a child-sized teapot, but a 'real' teapot that an adult would use. It was ivory porcelain with gold trim and in the middle of the teapot's front, the porcelain formed a little stage where a tiny ballerina stood with her toes pointed and her arms raised.  The teapot sat on a porcelain music box...... when you put the teapot down on its pedestal and turned the key, the song that played was "Dance, Ballerina, Dance" which was the song my grandmother would sing to me when I showed her the new steps I had learned at dance class. And as the song played, the little ballerina on the teapot would twirl as the music-box key turned to play the music.

"That's what I want..... the ballerina teapot," I told my dad.  He told me that the teapot wasn't meant for a little girl..... "That's a lady's teapot," he told me..... "Why don't you pick out one of the smaller ones on the next shelf?"

"But I don't want the teapot for me..... that teapot is for Grandma, and she's a lady!"

Daddy insisted that I pick out something for myself... his suggestions were the large ballerina doll or one of the little girl tea sets.  In my five-year-old mind, I knew that the ballerina teapot was the only thing to bring home from Radio City Music Hall.  Grandma had tea every afternoon.... her teapot was old and cracked... and this teapot had a tiny ballerina on top of it, and it played the song that Grandma always sang to me.  And I stood there in that gift shop and told my dad all of those things and again told him that I didn't want anything for me because "Grandma needs that teapot."

We bought the teapot.   Before we walked out of Radio City that day, my dad asked me if I was sure I wanted the teapot for Grandma instead of the ballerina doll for myself.  I was positive I had chosen the right thing and didn't want to change my mind.  My dad carried the package home on the subway and when we got to Grandma's house, he let me carry it into the house and give it to my grandmother.

"Did you have your tea yet, Mama?"  my dad asked my grandmother.
"Over an hour ago," said Grandma.
"Well, put the water on..... you're about to have more."

My grandmother unwrapped that teapot and she started to cry when my dad turned the little key and "Dance, Ballerina, Dance" started playing and the little ballerina twirled and twirled on the front of her new teapot.  When she dried her tears with the hankie she always seemed to have in her apron pocket, Grandma said she would keep the teapot in the china cabinet so it wouldn't get cracked like her old one.  I knew what that meant--- anything that went into the china cabinet came out only twice a year, on Easter Sunday and on Christmas.

I begged my grandmother to keep the teapot in the kitchen, right on the counter near the stove, so she would always use it...... "The teapot is for every day when you have your tea!"
"But it's so beautiful!" said my grandmother..... "What if something happens to it?"
"Then daddy will buy you another one!" I told her. My father didn't say a word, but I remember him rolling his eyes towards the ceiling, and then he rubbed his thumb and his first two fingers together, silently telling my grandmother that I had no idea how expensive that teapot was at the Music Hall.

It was decided that the ballerina teapot would sit on the counter in the kitchen.... and my grandmother did indeed use it every day, every day. On the days that I was there for her tea time, we would both have our cups of tea (with milk and sugar and tiny spoons and very small cookies or slices of cake)... and the teapot would play its song, the ballerina would twirl, and when I finished my tea, I would get up and twirl myself around Grandma's kitchen while she sang "Dance, Ballerina, Dance."

I think of it now and get tears in my eyes... but I don't have a hankie in my apron, nor do I even have an apron.  I do, however, have the ballerina teapot.  The pedestal long ago fell onto my grandmother's kitchen floor and shattered... so there is no music box to play the song.  That doesn't mean that the song no longer plays, because I can still hear it in my mind..... and I can hear Grandma singing it with her Italian accent.  And if I try hard enough, I can imagine a little girl in a pink tulle dance outfit twirling around on a green tiled kitchen floor.

The little ballerina in the teapot is still intact, but she wears a new silk ribbon dress which replaced the white tulle outfit she was wearing from Radio City. She no longer twirls, but just stands quietly on her toes waiting for the day when she will be released from behind the glass doors of my china cabinet. I have to admit that I keep that ballerina teapot in my china cabinet.... what if something happened to it?  It could never be replaced.

I don't use that teapot for tea, and actually, no one has made tea in that Radio City teapot since my grandmother passed away in the early 1970s.  It was Grandma's teapot, after all.... bought for her afternoon tea, and without a doubt, even if I did make tea in that teapot, I know for certain that it wouldn't be as delicious as my memory of hearing Grandma singing Dance, ballerina, dance.....

Amazing Gracie

Every few months, both my husband and I look at the web-sites that feature puppies and dogs for adoption. There have also been puppies being offered for sale right here in town, either at the Walmart shopping center or in the old downtown area. We came so very close last year to adopting a tiny puppy... so close that we even gave the puppy a name--- Winnie The Poohdle.

Close, but no cigar. And no puppy, either.  Every time we get that close, my husband is usually the one who calls a halt to the procedure.  "Do we really want another dog?" he will ask me. (Regarding Winnie the Poohdle, my answer was yes.)  "Are we really ready to commit another 15 years to taking care of a dog?"  (That's about the time when I give him the look that says "Just which part of 'we' do you think will be taking care of the dog?")

At the end of the debates and discussions, the answer to the dilemma is always the same. "We had a dog. We had the best dog. We had Gracie."  And that about ends the discussion for my husband.

We adopted Gracie in October of 1996, shortly after buying our house in Clear Lake. We were barely settled for a month in that house when my husband wanted to 'take a look' at the local SPCA.  The look-see found us face-to-face with this little black and white puppy who followed my husband all around the grounds of the SPCA.  She sat down when he stopped walking and looked up at him with bright eyes and an honest-to-goodness smile on her little puppy face.  As soon as my husband started walking again, that puppy was at his heels, following his every step.

They told us that she was part Border Collie, part Black Lab. The puppy's face turned side to side, from the SPCA worker to my husband, as we all chatted about the puppy.  They didn't think she'd get very big... no more than 50 pounds was their best guess.  My husband thought 50 pounds was a small dog.  I disagreed... my idea of a small dog was less than 15 pounds, like the fluffy lap-dogs that I'd had years ago.  "Fifty pounds is nothing," said my husband.  In my mind, 50 pounds was a lot of dog, but how could I argue with that puppy-face who wouldn't take her eyes off of my husband.

The Border Collie/Black Lab puppy came home with us that day. We stopped at a local pet shop to buy bowls and a bed, a blanket and a leash, and a training crate.  The crate had to be large enough to hold the puppy at her adult weight, so it was a good size. Not the smallest crate in the store, but not the largest, either.  The puppy sat on my lap during the drive home, but she never took her eyes away from my husband. They had bonded in the SPCA yard, as if they'd been together forever.

Puppy needed a name. We tried names based on her coloring, which didn't seem to work (too common). Then we tried the usual dog-type names, which again, seemed too common. My husband suggested a people-name, and we tried a few of those, which didn't seem to fit her.  At the time, I was reading a book by George Burns, titled "Gracie," a book about the love and marriage of George Burns and his wife Gracie Allen. It was a beautifully written book.

I suggested the name "Gracie."  My husband liked the name, and the puppy seemed to like the name as well because she smiled up at my husband and sat by his feet when he said the name to her.  So Gracie it was. The name was cute, the name fit somehow, and over the years, we would also call her Princess Grace, and Gracie Boo-Boo....... but officially, her name was Gracie.

I quickly realized just how energetic a puppy can be when it has the genes of a Border Collie and a Black Lab. There were many days when my husband came home from work and I told him "This dog has got to go back! I can't control her, and you're gone more than you're home and I'm stuck with this crazy puppy!"

As always, in questionable situations, my husband checked the Internet.  He looked under dog trainers and found a local young man just setting up a puppy and dog training business.  We signed Gracie up for obedience classes.  At first, both my husband and I took Gracie to the lessons. Then my husband's job got in the way of the classes, so it was just me and Gracie with the dog-trainer, and then me showing my husband what 'we' had learned.

The obedience classes were the best idea.... Gracie became the best-trained dog in the neighborhood. She could be stubborn at times, especially if we had to do those lessons after it had just rained. (Princess Grace did not like walking through puddles.)  As Gracie grew up through her puppy-hood, and entered into her own little dog-world, she was indeed an obedient and well-trained dog.  My husband always walked her without a leash, and just one word from him (as in "Gracie!") would have her immediately at his side and looking up at him with love and loyalty.

The dog-training classes were instrumental in teaching Gracie not to chase our cats. We asked the trainer to come to our house for those lessons, and young-puppy Gracie quickly caught on that chasing our cats was not allowed. In all the years we had Gracie, she never once hurt or even ran after one of 'her' cats. Actually, our cats just loved her and would curl up next to her as she slept. Gracie only drew the doggie-line in the sand if the cats tried to take one of her chew-toys.... Gracie would just walk slowly towards the stolen chew-toy and take it away from the cat-thief.

My husband taught Gracie to sit and wait when she got to the corner of a street. Both Gracie and my husband would look both ways before crossing, but Gracie wouldn't move off the curb until my husband said "Let's go, Gracie!"   My husband also taught Gracie to play "Hide and Seek," telling her to sit in the kitchen of our Clear Lake house while he went to another part of the house to hide. I would stand there with Gracie, counting to 20.... and then I'd tell Gracie "Go find Daddy!"... and off she would go, looking behind doors, in closets, behind furniture and curtains. She would have such a serious look on her face as she searched, and then as soon as she found him, she would break into that big doggie-smile of hers and literally jump for joy.

After countless times of Gracie 'finding' my husband, we decided to see what would happen if my husband and I changed places.  He stood there with Gracie and counted to 20, and I went to hide. From the other side of the house, I could hear my husband saying "Go find Mommy!"  Then I heard it again... and again... and yet again.  Turned out that when my husband said that to Gracie, she just sat there in the kitchen, looking up at him and smiling, not at all interested in 'finding Mommy.'  My husband felt so badly for me, but I just laughed.  Gracie was his dog, and had been from Day One.  I was just there to walk Gracie when he wasn't home, and I was the one who made sure she had food and water and chew-toys.  In Gracie's mind, I could be replaced by a robot. But my husband was her Daddy.

When Gracie was about two years old, I was walking in the neighborhood park with a friend and we saw a man walking a dog that looked just like Gracie. I stopped to talk to the man, and I asked him about his dog.... he had adopted the dog (a male) from the same SPCA, in the same month and year as we had adopted Gracie.  When we had first seen Gracie, they told us that she'd come to the SPCA with a male puppy from the same litter, so that man in the park that day was walking with our Gracie's brother.  I told the man our Gracie's story, and asked him what he had named his dog..... his dog's name was George.  I asked him why he chose that name, and he said the dog had the personality of his Uncle George, and they couldn't think of a better name for him, and the name George just seemed to be the best fit.  We were both stunned..... George and Gracie!  (Honestly, you just couldn't make this stuff up!) Later on that week, my husband and I walked Gracie across the park to meet her brother George, but they didn't remember one another at all. They sniffed each other, and then just sat there, content to chew on the dog biscuits that we had brought along for George.

When you don't have children, your pets become your children, and that's what happened with Gracie.  When she was a small puppy, I took her to yard sales with me every Saturday morning. She would wait for me in the car and sniff and inspect everything I bought at the sales.  If I bought a small stuffed animal for her, she would hold on to it during the rest of the car ride, then drop it at my husband's feet when we got home.

We took her to Galveston with us when we went to the beach... she would watch my husband swimming out in the Gulf, but wouldn't follow him out into the surf.  Princess Grace didn't like getting her paws wet, but she wouldn't leave the water's edge as long as my husband was swimming. Gracie would sit there on the damp sand, waiting for her hero to come back from the sea.

When we traveled, we found an excellent pet-sitter for Gracie and our cats. The first time we went away, poor Gracie must have thought we had abandoned her. Our pet-sitter took a photo of Gracie after we'd gone, and the sad look on her face was heart-breaking.  By the second trip, however, Gracie was smiling in the pet-sitter's photos.... she quickly learned that we'd be coming back, plus she truly trusted and loved the awesome man who took care of our 'gang' when we were gone.  The pet-sitter always told us that he felt like "The Mayor of Clear Lake" when he was out walking Gracie because everyone knew her by name, everyone petted her, and Gracie even sat still when small children tugged on her fur, as if she knew they didn't know any better.

Gracie was 13 years old when we moved from the ranch-style house in Clear Lake to this three-story Victorian in the Hill Country.  Not having grown up with steps and staircases, Gracie couldn't get past the first floor of this house.  The main staircases are wood, and not carpeted, and Gracie's legs kept sliding as she tried to follow my husband up the stairs. More than once, Gracie slid back down the first three or four steps that she tried to conquer. We finally decided that to keep her safe, we had to keep her on the first floor only. Every night, we would say goodnight to Gracie, and tell her to stay in the kitchen.  I put her blanket in a warm corner, and we got an area rug for the center of the room. She was comfortable, but I'm sure she wasn't too happy about not sleeping by my husband's side of the bed.  Every morning when my husband came down the stairs, he would say "Gracie Boo-Boo! Good morning, Gracie!"  And she would watch him walking down those stairs, smiling her big doggie-smile, and then rub herself against his legs like a cat.

Gracie seemed to like this house and the property. When we first moved here, she would lay in the grass under the pecan trees, just watching the country-world go by.... horses and cows and goats across the road, ducks in the pond, dozens and dozens of birds.  There was one special day that my husband and I still talk about...... Gracie and the cats were in the shade under the trees, our chickens were pecking the grass near the flowerbeds, and my husband and I were picking the pecans that had fallen from the trees. It was a Norman Rockwell painting... with gentle Gracie knowing that the cats and the chickens belonged to us, that they were not for chasing or hurting... it was a painting come to life out here in the Hill Country.

In her 14th year, Gracie started to slow down. She didn't want to walk much, and would go into the yard and stay out there only if my husband was outside. With me, she would go out into the grass to 'take care of her business,' but then come back up on the porch, wanting to be back in the house and either on her blanket or in the middle of the kitchen rug.  I was constantly tripping over her..... I would tell her "We have 23 acres here and you're always right under my feet, Gracie!"  And she would look at me with sad eyes. (The doggie-smiles were only for my husband.)

On a hot summer morning in mid-July of 2010, I walked into the kitchen and found Gracie stretched out on the kitchen tiles. There was a puddle of blood underneath her, and she tried to wag her tail as I talked to her. I quickly called upstairs to my husband, we telephoned the vet, and within ten minutes we were out of the house and driving towards the main road with Gracie on a blanket in the back seat of the car.

The vet was gentle and kind, but the look on his face spoke volumes.  A tumor had been growing inside of Gracie.... we had no idea.  The bleeding meant that the tumor had burst, and its position made it totally inoperable, especially in a dog of her age.  We didn't wake up that morning with the intention of having to make such a monumental decision about this once-tiny puppy who grew into a 48-pound dog who was exceptionally beyond measure in character, intelligence, and loyalty.

It was my husband's decision in 1996 to adopt Gracie, and it was his decision in 2010 to have Gracie put to sleep.  My husband stayed with Gracie till the very end, but I waited outside the examining room.  I think the hardest thing we had to do was leave her behind when it was all over. My husband walked back to the car holding Gracie's leash, and I was holding the receipt for the procedure.  I remember getting into the car and looking at that piece of paper and thinking "This is how Gracie's life ends? With a piece of paper?"

The house without Gracie seemed too quiet and too empty. We weren't missing just a dog, we were missing a true member of our family. Cats are cats, and if you're lucky, you have cats that are social and interactive and interested in their humans, which our cats have always been.  But a dog.... a dog is just different somehow.  Your dog truly becomes part of your family; your cat believes it owns the family. And therein lies the difference.

We have been dog-less for four years now. Every once in a while, we look at Pet-Finders, or my husband looks at the sites for Border Collie rescues, and last year, we met a lady selling that tiny puppy that we would have named Winnie The Poohdle. (How we walked away from that one, I'll never know.)

I keep saying that I don't want another Border Collie, or even a Border Collie mix.  Gracie didn't exceed the SPCA's estimate of 50 pounds, but still, at 48 pounds, she was a lot of dog to handle at times. (For me, anyway... for my husband, she was a piece of cake.)

If we had bought Winnie The Poohdle, I would have been dressing up that tiny dog in cute little outfits that would have embarrassed my husband.  I know that he wants a bigger dog than one of the miniature or toy breeds, if we ever do get another dog.  The bottom line is, my husband would really like another Gracie.

In my mind, there was only one Gracie. We were lucky enough to have her for 14 years, and my husband was lucky enough to have been adored by such a loyal and loving dog.  I can still see Gracie's bright eyes when she was looking at my husband... her expression of love for him came from deep within her doggie-heart... her 'daddy' was her hero, her soul-mate, her god.  Without a doubt, if Gracie could have put her 48-pound self into my husband's pocket, she would have. It's surprising to me that she never found a way to do just that.

Looking back now, maybe Gracie was smart enough to realize that she didn't have to put herself into my husband's pocket... all she had to do, and she most certainly did, was put herself into his heart.

And Gracie, truly amazing Gracie, is still there.

This Big Old House.

We found this house just because we decided to drive down this particular road.... we liked the name on the street sign and on a whim, we made that turn to have a look-see.  All that week, we had been up here in the Hill Country, looking at houses and trying to find one that would make it 'worth our while' to leave the Clear Lake area. We had gone through two hurricanes...... two evacuations...... and thankfully, our Gulf area house had not been damaged, but we didn't want to wait and see if we could get away with that kind of miracle during the next hurricane season.

So my husband searched the real estate listings on the Internet.... looking for houses which had years of character and acres of property... a house that said 'home' to both of us.  We didn't even bother looking at subdivisions... my husband said that if we did indeed move, he didn't want another backyard surrounded by a six-foot-tall wooden fence.  He wanted land, and lots of it.  If we were going to move, I wanted vintage charm and original details.

Down this road we came that day.... it was the 17th of March in 2009.  The road was a typical country lane that was shared by two lanes of traffic but the width of the road was about a lane-and-a-half.  You had to drive slowly, in case another car was coming the opposite way... and plus all the properties along this road were spread out and there were horses and cows to look at, and wildflowers popping up along the fence lines. And the trees.... mostly all of the road was under a canopy of tree limbs that shaded your car as you drove along.... live oaks and pecans and pines... and even some flowering trees alongside the creek that we didn't even realize was there till we were driving over it.

We got to the end of that road and discovered that a big old Victorian house was sitting by itself up on a hill, surrounded by pastures filled with green grass and a large pond and the promises of wildflower blooms. "Now there's a house," said my husband..... "Why couldn't we find something like that for sale?"

He had stopped the car in the middle of the road and we just looked up at that house... a wrap-around porch that went all around the house... three floors of vintage windows, some of them stained glass... a gazebo in the side yard... a guest cottage in the backyard.... a barn on the back pasture.... wherever you looked, it seemed to be just perfect.  I suggested that we drive further up the hill leading to the house, so we could have a look from the other side of the property.... and my husband did just that.

That's when we saw the "For Sale" sign... right by the mailbox.  I told my husband to pull into the driveway... we could see if anyone was home, maybe they'd let us look at the inside.  "We'll just take the phone number from the sign and call the agent," was my husband's answer.  Not good enough for me... we were right there!

"Don't get your hopes up," my husband told me as he pulled into the driveway. (Hopes?  I was already thinking of places to get packing boxes for everything in our Clear Lake house.)  Before he had turned off the engine, I was out of the car and walking up the back steps of the porch.  No one answered the doorbell when I rang it, but I didn't see that being much of a problem. I started looking into every window that wasn't fully covered with a curtain..... I saw part of the kitchen, all of the foyer, most of the living room, part of the dining room..... and I told my husband "This is our house."

"We don't even know the price," my husband told me.  Details.... details.... men get caught up in such non-emotional details.  I was already picturing our living room furniture in that living room... and I knew that our dining room table could be opened up with all its extensions and there would still be room to dance in that spectacular dining room.

My husband insisted we take down the number from the sign, check out the listing on the Internet, see how long it had been on the market, and then make an appointment with the agent to come back and see this house. Fine. Let him have his manly way.  I was already making up a floor plan in my mind and deciding where I would place the sofa and the chairs.... the paintings and the mirrors... and our antique French telephone table would of course be put in the foyer near the stairs.  In my mind, we were already 'home' and all I had to do was start packing.

We came back to see the inside of the house on a glorious day... birds were singing, goats and cows and horses were grazing in the property across the road, barn swallows were building nests on 'our' property, wildflowers were starting to bloom with sincere promises to transform the green pastures into Impressionist paintings.  The inside of the house was more than I could have asked for... original wood floors, original stained glass windows, original built-in cabinets in both the kitchen and the dining room, French doors connecting the breakfast room to the dining room, the main staircase had two landings and a leaded glass window, and there was a second stairway coming up from the kitchen that met with the second landing of the front stairway.  All of the bedrooms had their own bathrooms.... the second floor hallway was a room in and of itself... the third floor would be the library of my dreams.  This was it. We were home.

"What will we do with all of those bedrooms?" my husband wanted to know.   Details... details.  I told him we'd do the same thing we did with "all" the bedrooms in our other house... the largest would be the master bedroom, the next largest would be his office, the other two would be my sitting room and my dressing room.  "And what about the master bedroom that's on the first floor?" he wanted to know.  Well, that was easy..... that would be the TV room, and I could keep the cats in there as well, to keep them from going all over the rest of the house.  It all sounded so simple to me.

We moved into this house on Memorial Day weekend, 2009.  The moving men were astounded that they never had to move a piece of furniture twice.  I followed them around this house as they carried each piece inside..... "That goes over there.... that goes in the corner in this room.... that goes right near the window in that room...."  I knew the furniture plan by heart....  as I spent all those weeks in Clear Lake packing up decorative and fragile treasures, my mind was back here in the Hill Country, picturing our furniture in this house.... I knew where everything would be placed even before the movers had taken our furniture out of the old house.

Even before we signed the papers at the closing, this big old Victorian felt like the house where I was born, in Woodhaven, Queens. The same three landings on the main staircase.... the same narrow slats on the vintage wood floors, nearly the same parquet designs on the dining room floor.... even the leaded glass windows.   Not only did this house match up with that Woodhaven house, but it also reminded me of Grandma and Grandpa's home in Queens.... the same archway between the living room and the dining room, the French doors, the old windows, the history of the house itself. The only difference was that this house had been fully renovated.... central air-conditioning, a pantry converted to a laundry room, a second pantry converted to a first floor half-bath.... and the kitchen tiles were identical to those in Grandma's house.  A little miracle there, one that I hadn't noticed that day I was on the porch and peeking through the windows because no one was at home.

It took some time getting used to.... this house was larger than our Clear Lake house, plus it had three floors instead of one.... the garage was bigger, and then there was the guest cottage and the guest rooms above the barn. And then the property.... 23 acres was indeed more property than the quarter-acre we had in Clear Lake.  But wasn't this what we wanted?  A larger home with vintage charm, far far away from The Gulf and out of hurricane range.

I walk around this house and see all of our furniture sitting in their just-so places.... our furniture that we bought during the past 20 years, plus furniture that had belonged to my husband's mother and both of my grandmothers.  Everything is in just the right place here, and everything looks as if it has all been right here since the day the house was built in 1907.  It's like living in a three-story Victorian doll-house.

Tucked out here in the Hill Country, I never gave a thought about the wildlife that surrounds this house... all of those night-time animals living in the woods at the perimeter of our property. It seems that once the sun sets and darkness falls, the woods come alive with all those creatures. Coyotes, armadillos, possums, raccoons, foxes, bobcats, snakes,  and heaven only knows what else is out there during the night that I don't see. And who knew that scorpions by the millions were up here in The Hill Country, along with some of the largest spiders I've ever seen in my entire life.

During the day, the horses and cows and goats on the neighboring properties look serene and beautiful as they graze and roam around the fields.  But then there are days when the baby goats are crying out for their mamas and they sound like human babies who have been abandoned.  On other days, I can hear the mama cows crying for their calves who were taken to market.  When I hear those poignant cries, I can't even sit outside on the porch... I come into the house and close the doors and either sit here and type or go up to the third-floor library and read.

When we had finished settling into this house, my husband turned an existing dog kennel into a chicken coop. Fresh eggs! What could be better?  We bought six pretty hens, discovered they each had their own personalities and I named them all and they would come running across the yard when I called out to them. And the eggs every morning... those beautiful little miracles left in the nesting boxes for us.  And then came the hawks, and the coyotes, and the snakes. One by one, my beautiful hens were 'lost' to the wildlife around us.  We tried again, buying six new hens, each with their own personalities, and I gave them names.  They all ran across the yard when I called them.  And then... the coyotes... the snakes... it all happened again.  When the last (and my favorite) hen was killed by a snake, we turned the chicken coop into a screen-porch for our outside cats. I went back to buying eggs at the store like the rest of the world.

When we first moved here, we had a lawn service come out to take care of the grass around the house and the cottage and the barn.  Before too long, my husband bought a riding mower and now he does all that landscaping, and I help with a smaller mower that gets into the tight spaces. I'm probably the only woman out here in the hills who's wearing makeup and earrings while walking behind a lawn mower.  I've weeded and mulched flowerbeds, watered a vegetable garden, and I don't even scream anymore when I find a green and black ribbon snake behind the azaleas.  And when the gardening gloves come off, I have to stifle a little scream when I see a broken nail and a ruined manicure.

In the long summer that stretches on for months and months in the state of Texas, we have gone through countless weeks of over 100-degree days that have scorched the pastures and turned green grass into something that sounds like cornflakes when you walk across it.  Our beautiful pond is filled with swimming ducks and croaking frogs in the spring-time, but a long hot summer will dry up every bit of water from one end to the other, making the pond look like just a big hole in the ground.

And then the short winter months have turned into frigid stupidity up here in the Hill Country these past five years. We watch the daily weather broadcasts and when the temperatures drop anywhere near the freezing point, we drip all the faucets and turn on heaters in the barn and the cottage, in the hopes that no pipes will freeze when the winds come whipping through these hills.  Everyone's property is so large that there are no buffers for the wind.... a 40-degree dot on the thermometer can turn into 29 degrees with the blessed wind-chill factor that the weather wizards on TV are always talking about. The first time we had such weather, pipes froze by the water-well in the barn..... the water coming into the house was non-existent. We called a plumber for a quick fix, but half of the County had the same problem..... totally unexpected weather conditions.... it was a nightmare for the Hill Country.  As a result, my husband taught himself to be a plumber and he re-plumbed every blessed pipe that had frozen.

There are days when I truly love every square inch of this big old historic house.  And then there are other days when I wish I could snap my fingers and have this house reappear on a quiet street within thirty minutes of the Houston theater and museum district and within a ten-minute drive to a SteinMart and a really good shoe store.

We left very good friends back in Clear Lake, and we have made very good friends here in the Hill Country.  We left a perfectly good house on a Clear Lake cul de sac, and bought a perfectly grand house on 23 acres in the Hill Country.  Our Clear Lake house was too small for the big parties that we hosted for every holiday and occasion imaginable, and this vintage Victorian house is too big for the small parties that we have hosted here. No one has yet danced in our spectacular dining room and large living room in this house, but I can still remember the Conga Line that weaved through our small Clear Lake house when the steel drum band played at our Christmas party one year.

I sometimes wonder if our 'old' house had too many memories that we still keep so close to heart, and maybe this 'new' house just hasn't had enough opportunities to create more memories that we can add to our hearts.

I could live without the threatening wildlife, especially the snakes.  I would miss the deer and the barn swallows and the wildflowers.  I could live without the water-well and the pumping system, and would give anything at all if 'city water' was available out here in these hills.  I would miss the sunsets and the zillions of wildflowers and the full moon shining through our pecan trees, but I could easily give up the scorpions.

If we hadn't bought this house, where would we be now?  We were determined to move out of the hurricane zone near the Gulf.  We were determined to have property not surrounded by subdivision fences.  We now have everything we wished for, and then some.

Maybe it's the "and then some" that gets to me from time to time.