Ah, Fill the Cup

The first stop on our grand US Tour was in New Hampshire to visit my grandmother--Abby and Reese's only living great grandparent.  To me, she's Nana; to my kids she's Nana Kay.  Nana Kay is 88 and still doing . . . pretty great (that all rhymes!).

I wrote about her last year when we took a two-week trip around Wales where Nana grew up.  It was my first time.  She came to the US in her 20's, after WWII, to marry an American soldier who had been stationed in Wales/England.  My grandfather passed away when I was a baby, and Nana has been living on her own ever since.  She has a tight community of English friends and fellow Anglophiles and spends a lot of time with her church.

I remember visiting her as a child and thinking she always decorated her home with such purpose.  She has the expected British bric o brac, but what always stuck with me was the smell of Pears Soap and the paintings of city street scenes that she had acquired over the years.

It was comforting to return.

Of course, Nana (my mom) and Papa O joined us, because they-we would have it no other way.  :-)





 A new teapot for her collection . . . Delft, of course:

There was lots of Uno (of course) and Monopoly.

And my mom sweetly continued my birthday celebration with a special dinner, cupcakes, and a present . . . a date day with Doug.

I spy a Nana who adores her grandkids!

  And most especially, we maintained a tradition with Nana Kay at the Lobster Boat:

My Nana and I talk a lot about books.  She reads a lot.  I read a lot.  This visit, she was reading the poems of a 12-century Persian monk that the pastor of her church had given her.  Her reading material isn't usually so esoteric, but even so, it's not so hard to appreciate her favorite passage from this collection:

Ah, fill the Cup, what boots it to repeat

How Time is slipping underneath our Feet

Unborn Tomorrow and dead Yesterday

Why fret about them if Today be sweet!

These 900 year old words are made all the more meaningful this week because my grandmother fell while voting in the mid-term elections on Tuesday.  She will be fine, and she didn't break any bones.  But she spent the day in the hospital and is rather banged up.  

Life is fragile, indeed.  For all my loved ones, let's see each other as much as we can, and laugh as much as we can.  You and me.