A few days later, John and Darla drove up from Florida after spending a month in St. Augustine—a trip I would have found arduous—but they arrived on our doorstep with smiles, their overnight bags, and Katrina, their Coton de Tulear.

Darla handed me a plush bathmat with the words “Squeaky Clean” and a copy of Jeanette Walls’ Half Broke Horses. “I was needing a new mat for our guest bathroom,” I said, and told her I knew I would enjoy the novel, having loved The Glass Castle. Somehow, Darla always knows the exact right gift—not just for us, but for everyone she knows. Intuitive shopping is her super power.

We spoke in whispers—it being a tad past nine and Bob already retired—while Katrina padded through the house, finding the food and water bowls that I had set out. I wondered if she remembered them from her last visit.

“This house smells like Nana’s house,” John said, nose lifted. We both knew that Nana’s house represented the very best moments of our childhoods. I blushed, realizing that my ovearching life goal has been to make a space where others would feel as at home as I had been at our Nana’s. This, I thought, was my super power.

What was that smell, we wondered, trying to pick it apart. “Do you use Calgon bath salts?” John asked.

“No, no bathtub here. Windex and fried onions, perhaps.”

“Remember that face cream Nana kept in the downstairs bathroom with her makeup?” And we drifted down memory lane, thinking about our grandmother special smells and our days as children on her acre of paradise.

The next morning the five of us sat in our yellow dining room and when our plates were empty, it was time for show and tell. First, John went out to the van to fetch a small alligator head that Darla had picked up for someone back home in Pennsylvania.

Next, Bob gave a tour of his gorgeous orchids. Like Bob, Darla wears the green thumb in their house. She, too, has a few orchids.

Show and tell is boring for little dogs, but Katrina is made of patience. She lay down in our living room, bathed in orchid lights, and waited for a good smell to appear, or for her people to move toward the door.

We soon said our goodbyes on the lawn, promising to drop in on each other as often as possible, no matter for how long or short. We’ve often enjoyed John and Darla’s hospitality and were pleased to return the favor. They are the kind of hosts who leave chocolates for their guests, and post “Welcome, Camille and Bob,” on their refrigerator.

After their van had vanished down the road, I went inside to strip the bed and looking out the window, wondered when I’ll get around to finishing washing the others. Maybe next week, I thought, and turned my attention to other, less productive pursuits.

I saw your childhood home last month and have been dying to tell you. Not the home you lived in when I was young—the one you lived in when you were young.

But as you know, life gets in the way and I am only now finding time to write this letter. I meant to sit down and write after we got back from New York, but there was an impromptu road trip to Colorado, and then Dad’s funeral which I know you attended in spirit.

Anyhow, thanks to a day-trip to Greenpoint with our cousin, I have a much better sense of what your life might have been like fifty years before I was born.

Long before you were my Nana, you were a rising star on the vaudeville scene, and before that you were a little Polish girl who came to America to join her family in Brooklyn. Just saying those words makes me puff up with pride. My Nana, the beautiful ingenue!

When I was a child, I assumed that you had always been a grown up. It never occurred to me to try picturing you as a little girl. But after walking through your old neighborhood—in your footsteps—I began to envision you as a young girl with her whole, magical life ahead.

I know, I know. I can hear you laughing. I always could make you laugh. I know your life was just as much struggle as glamor.

Anyway, to go on with my story, Bob and I met my brother, Joe, and our cousin at the East River Ferry on East 34th Street.

Our cousin has long been interested in the Polish side of the family, and has been to your childhood home in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighborhood several times. He would serve as our guide.

The ferry deposited us onto the pier on the Brooklyn side of the river. To our left, we could see the pilings from the old pier you would have used to walk into Greenpoint after arriving at Ellis Island from Poland.

You’d probably be appalled at the construction going on in your old stomping grounds. Greenpoint is now the third most expensive Brooklyn neighborhood! And I can see why, with all the lovely shade trees and cute little shops.

It was a short walk from the pier to the house you and your family lived in more than 100 years ago at 156 India Street.

It was a chilly morning and I was glad I’d packed a hat and gloves, but the trees were all leafed out and despite an occasional sprinkle, we didn’t get too wet.

We learned about how your aunt brought you to the States to join your parents and older siblings.

Bob found this 1940 photo of 156 India Street. You would have been long gone by then. Didn’t you leave home when you were fifteen to work for an Irish family? And then, unhappy with the way they treated you, get your start in the theatre?

James and Kathryn met us on India Street—they had driven their car to New York—and James got out and walked over to Green Street with us.

One of the houses on this block was where your aunt’s family lived.

After our little walking tour, we went over to Karczma, arriving before they opened for lunch, and so a few of us made some important phone calls. These days you can call anyone from anywhere and so, if you have a demanding job like, say, pastor of a church, you are always in demand.

When Father/Brother Joe heard the noon bells from nearby St. Anthony’s church, he took a moment to pray with James and Kathryn.

Once inside, we ordered lunch and some of us celebrated with a beer.

The food was delicious! Fried pierogi, potato pancakes with mushroom sauce, white borscht in bread bowls, mashed potatoes, grilled salmon with dill sauce, fried buckwheat kasha, and green salad with freshly chopped peppers, tomatoes, and cucumbers.

We had stopped at a bakery and bought a long, poppyseed bread roll which we shared outside the restaurant after we ate. It was very good, Nana, but I like yours better.

A few of us walked the one and a half miles from the restaurant to Calvary Cemetery in Queens across Newtown Creek. Our guide pointed out the locations of some of the factories that your brothers and cousins would have worked at. Lucky for you, you made it onto a chorus line at one of the nearby Vaudeville houses and didn’t have to work in a factory.

Calvary Cemetery is the largest cemetery I’ve ever been to. Three hundred and sixty-five acres! Jamie and Kathryn met us at the main entrance.

We dove in, searching for the first grave which happened to be your daughter’s, the little girl who would have been my father’s older sister.

I am so sorry you lost little Rita when she was only five months old. No wonder you told me, “Cookie, Cookie, don’t have kids. They’ll break your heart.” Then, come to find out, your little sister Sophie also lost a baby, little Virginia, twelve years later and had her buried with Rita, something our cousin learned when he took over care of the grave.

I can only imagine your pain. And I think I understand why you did not tell me anything of these two deaths. Too hard to put into words that a young girl could understand.

Naturally, we took pictures, but mostly we stood quietly, trying to come to terms with the losses you and your sister suffered and shared.

Finally, we came to your parent’s grave, where another one of your aunts—the mother of the Wallace (Wolosz) orphans that you and Grandpa helped raise—is buried.

And then we dispersed. Bob had already taken a subway back to our hotel near Times Square, making himself look as little like a tourist as possible. James and Kathryn began their long drive home, and Joe and I took the ferry back across the river where he got into his car.

I chose to walk the thirty minutes uptown. It felt good to be a pedestrian among so many others, many of them caught up in their private thoughts like I was. Rather than feeling small and alone, I felt connected to the sidewalk sea of humanity, big and safe, and part of the great protoplasmic flow. I am a New Yorker at heart. It’s in my blood. I know you will understand.

Love, Cookie

For some time now, you’ve been on the lurk for a cassette player. Your collection of poorly-labeled tapes includes a forty-year-old recording of you and your brother, Bob, road tripping up the Texas panhandle one new moon night. Another tape features an after-dinner chat with your father’s mother, your Nana, from when you lived together in the ’70s. One includes Christmas carol duets sung by your mother and brother Michael. There are cacophonous family dinners, and skits the boys performed at the Farmhouse long before leaving the parental nest. You haven’t listened to them for years.

Sitting behind a red light last week, you take notice of a slot above your car radio. You stop at a thrift store and pick up a tape, push it in, and are stupefied when Roy Orbison’s voice erupts from the Subaru’s speakers. Back at home, you search for the long-silent cassettes and find them, six of them, nested inside a blue and brown Chapel Hill Toffee box.

You’ve brought the box with you, and after navigating backward without running into a crepe myrtle and shifting into drive, you choose a tape. A woman’s voice begins describing the cassette’s contents, and you think, “That’s me.” A moment later, you realize you are, instead, hearing your mother’s voice. She made the recording in 1998 and has included a road trip with Michael, his visit with Nana, and brother Joseph’s tour of Auschwitz.

When you tell your mom, while chopping greens, about how you confused her voice with yours, she starts singing. “We are Siamese if you please… “The effort makes her cough. You lower the volume and continue cutting out collard stems with a short, sharp knife, stacking the leaves on the far side of the board. She recovers and says, “Remember that? We used to sing it together on City Island.”

“Oh yes,” you say, as you always do. Sometimes you sing along, but not today.

She tells you that people couldn’t tell your voices apart when you sang together, a detail that seems new to you. Time has a way of bending memories.

It begins to snow, and your phone rings. Shelley is on her way home from Apex with time to chat. You tell her how you discovered the tape deck and mistook your mother’s voice for your own. How old was she?” she asks, and you know the answer without counting. “My age, exactly.” You stare out the window at the falling snow.

There is a place in that same tape where your brother, Michael, is talking to Nana in the nursing home. You lean in towards the console even though you know the sound is coming from the speakers near your feet, trying to discern the muzak-muddled words. “You look the same,” he tells her. “You always look the same.” Her response is inaudible. He continues talking, amicable, cheerful, philosophically nostalgic. “Even though I’ve changed,” he says, “I’m still the same Mike.”

“Do you remember Camille? She talks about you a lot,” he asks, and straining against your seat belt you hear the familiar croak of Nana’s voice. Now Michael is saying, “They’ve got you tied down or I would take you for a walk.”

Your feel trapped between life and death, suffocated by all those years, and wish you could walk into that gleaming room and set her loose. You remember your last visit to the nursing home, when you got her up and walked those loud and sterile halls together. You look away, out the windshield, wishing you hadn’t moved out west, knowing you couldn’t have played it any other way. Michael starts talking about food, about what a fantastic cook Nana was, and saying that if he lived closer, he’d whip her up some of his famous stew.

You arrive home and pull the car into the garage. You’ve planned the groceries, your social calendar, and menu for a snowy weekend and won’t need to take the car out again until Monday. Leaving the toffee box behind, you walk towards the house, distracted by the echos in your head.

Dear Nana,

You would have been 117 today, a possibility which wouldn’t have crossed my mind had I not read Neenah Ellis’ If I Live to be 100 – Lessons from the Centenarians, a series of interviews with men, women, and couples between the ages of 100 and 117.

While some of the interviewees were bed-bound or under the care of others, many still lived at home. One woman had feisty red hair that made me think of your stylish cut and color, and this woman got up every day and rowed across the lake behind her house unless the weather got in her way.

Another woman got up every morning and made breakfast for herself and her husband, also 100. “Sadie can’t sleep past six o’clock,” he said and, having timed his wife on the morning of the interview, was able to boast that they had sat down to eat only twelve minutes after he and his wife got out of bed.

I picture you at 117, making your way downstairs to feed the dogs before stepping outside to ponder your gardens. I imagine you sitting in the shade of your plum tree, your fingers idly resting on a canine, or napping in your green chair, the latest copy of Newsweek spread across your lap and the sun spilling from the picture window over your left shoulder. In my mind’s eye, I see you gather a hunk of chives and clip them with your kitchen scissors to snip into a bowl of potato salad.

If I live to be 100, I am reasonably sure that my day will pulse with purpose much the same as yours did. You taught me how to keep everything moving along, high and tight, loosely organized, and comfortable.

Yesterday I met three individuals and my friend, Linda, in her living room. We were there to discuss strategies for Drawdown, a direct line of attack on climate disruption formerly known as climate change or global warming. However you frame it, we desperately need to stop spewing greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere and encourage carbon sequestering, or Drawdown. I know you would be front and center regarding this movement, cheering for Time Magazine’s Person of the Year, Greta Thunberg, and encouraging your grandchildren to take action.

As Linda prepared hibiscus tea in the other room, I enjoyed some light, pre-meeting conversation. Talk of tea led to talk of Kool-Aid, which led to mention of Jim Jones’ cult massacre. Emboldened by how quickly we had skidded onto this deliciously thin ice, I noted the absence of Kool-Aid and new sneakers. “I think we’re probably not going to get beamed up today.”

The younger woman in Linda’s living room raised a quizzical eyebrow, and someone explained how the members of Heaven’s Gate in San Diego, dressed in new shoes, swallowed applesauce laced with fatal levels of phenobarbital and left this world in the spring of 1997. We paused, and I peered out Linda’s ceiling-to-floor windows at the pines, imagining the approach of that spaceship, the light growing more intense until we were all suddenly whisked away into the ether.

“Would you be ready if this was the day?” I asked, turning the question over in my mind. In my 30’s I wanted to live forever, but now I’m not so sure. Someone answered, “No, I still have things I need to take care of, so I don’t leave too much of a mess.”

But I could see myself letting go, staunching the flow of my newsfeed with stories of melting glaciers, coastal flooding, war, protests, and political upheaval. But, as long as I’m here, I know my To-Do ticker tape will keep pushing me out of bed every morning. There will be articles to read, letters to write, chives to snip, and in the spring — because summer is coming, there will be garlic to harvest.

Once upon a time there was a tavern
Where we used to raise a glass or two
Remember how we laughed away the hours
And dreamed of all the great things we would do

Those were the days my friend
We thought they’d never end
We’d sing and dance forever and a day

We whirl until tears fill our eyes. Dancing is so cathartic! You don’t know you’re holding anything in until it leaves.

I promised Nana we’d play that tune at her memorial, a detail I failed to fulfill. By then I’d moved across the country. In 1989, I traveled from Denver to New Jersey for the funeral after my Aunt and Uncle had done all the planning. Fast forward twenty-seven years, and Nana is still very much a part of my life. She whispers in my ear when I make decisions, smiles when I tend my roses, and guides my seasoning hand when I cook.

Next month Abundance NC is celebrating Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead with Death Faire on November 5th. I think it’ll be the perfect opportunity to honor my Nana’s memory with a dance. The celebration will feature plenty of delicious music and I’m looking forward to letting loose.

How easily I forget the importance of music. It is woven into the fiber of our beings, predating the written word. Prehistoric stories were passed along through song and dance. Some think knowledge is imprinted on our genes in this way. Surely Nana’s favorite song is written in my DNA.

Día de los muertos, a three-day celebration, has been around for three thousand years, beginning in southern Mexico and spreading north. Like many indigenous holidays, it eventually found its way onto the Gregorian calendar, moving from spring to fall to coincide with All Hallows Eve, All Saint’s Day and All Soul’s Day.

In New Orleans, All Saint’s Day is a big deal involving colorfully dressed skeletons, costumes, music, feasting, and all-night dancing in the streets. When Bob and I moved from Texas to North Carolina, we spent the night in New Orleans on All Saint’s Day. The streets were filled with happy revelry, practically everyone was carrying an instrument, and the parks were pulsing with music.

Death Faire will be a typical Abundance party, the perfect celebration of life, love, food and music. Chef Bill’s menu will likely show some creole influence, and four bands will provide a range of music. There will also be workshops, children’s activities, a costume contest, and a vendor village. Nana would not miss this for the world and she won’t. She’ll be there with me and my friends, as we dance our way across the lawn.

In theory, Christmas marks the season of peace and joy, but in practice we tend to set high bars for ourselves. I know I’m not the only one trying to pack too much into the last week of the year. I feel ensnared by commitments, tangled in party preparations.

I call upon Nana’s ear. She will listen to my woes without laughing and have something wise to say. Deeper into the woods I plunge, Nana at my side. Not all of my day is work, I begin, but I feel as if it is. This walk in the woods with you isn’t work, this is play. I enjoyed thirty minutes on facebook this morning and an hour corresponding with my email buddies. That wasn’t work, either.

And then it hits me. Nana wasn’t always on her feet, working. Nana napped in her chair by the phone in the afternoons and never missed “All in the Family” and “What’s My Line” on TV. When I shared her home we’d sit at the dining room table after dinner with a bottle of plum wine, relaxing and talking about anything that came to mind. Turns out, Nana was not the workaholic I’ve come to measure myself against.

I decide to explore the next level. What’s really troubling me is a task I wasn’t able to master. It had seemed like an easy problem but the solution eluded me. And then this morning Bob made a few transactions solving the problem I’d spent six hours trying to get my head around. His MBA and business career came to his aid in a way my horse, restaurant and clerical experience didn’t.

Some things are not possible. I couldn’t arm wrestle Arnold Schwarzenegger and win, for example. Nor could I swim the English Channel. I don’t have the mind for tax law but I’m smart enough to know when to say, “I can’t do this.” Not, “I don’t want to,” or “I’m too lazy to learn how to,” but “I can’t.”

Best not to attempt those things that are beyond you. You make your choices and live them without guilt. And then you sit in your favorite chair and relax.

Dear Nana,

I’ve been busy “Nanafesting” all week. That’s what we call it when we “manifest Nana,” usually in the kitchen. Seems like I’ve been cooking all week. I baked a cake for Jason’s birthday, made twenty sandwiches for Alisa’s moving-in party and five dozen chocolate chip cookies for Geoff’s birthday.

No, they weren’t as good as your cookies. No cookies ever could be. I’m still kicking myself for not paying better attention when you taught me how to make those extraordinary cookies. I could have at least written down the recipe!

For one thing, I’m not using butter these days. Was it sweet or salted butter that you used? Was the right kind of day rainy or dry? Did you use all brown sugar or half brown and half white? I do remember how important it is to cool the cookie sheet between baking, though. I can picture you putting it outside the back door on a cold day for a few minutes.

At any rate, it’s the thought that counts and my cookies were well received. The target of my affections felt suitably honored, and the cookie plate was soon empty.

You would love it here. Our neighbors and co-workers are pulsing with good energy and generous to a fault. Bob and I do our best to keep everyone fed and happy and all their problems solved. It’s a lot like your neighborhood, the one where friends dropped by with garden produce or cake, where people had time for each other and shared the burden of life’s challenges.

Jason and Haruka left for Dallas yesterday, gifting us twelve pounds of tomatoes which I’ll be turning into sauce. I haven’t forgotten your sauce secrets; red wine, Italian sausage and beef stock, only I use vegan sausage and beef broth. Bob brought in a bucket of peppers, so I’ll be adding five pounds of green bell peppers. I’ve even got some celery to throw in!

I’ll use the sauce in baked ziti which I’ll bring to the Biofarm CSA dinner on Tuesday. CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. Piedmont Biofarm is one of our tenants at work and we get a share of their vegetables every week. It’s fun to take tomatoes from one farm (and garden peppers), turn them into sauce and share it with another farm. We like to keep it moving, spreading the wealth as it were. Surely we don’t have monetary wealth, but food and comfort are the real currency of life, and that we have that in spades.

Alisa, her husband Chris, their three kids, and their extended family, Sarah and Joe, are a great addition to the ‘hood. They brought all kinds of animals, too – dogs, chickens, rabbits, parrots and pigs! They’ve got a back-to-basics mindset which echoes yours. They even brought an outhouse. I know, I can hear you saying, “That’s taking things a little too far.” And they have big gardening plans for their new nine acre property.

In fact, most of our friends grow some of their vegetables out back. Backyard gardens skipped a generation or two but are now returning. It’s a good trend.

Well, thank you for teaching me how to be a good neighbor. What’s new in your world? I hope you are happy up there in heaven with Jesus, heh heh…

Love, Cookie

I dreamed about my girlfriend Ruthann last night and that made me think of you. Plus, I can’t think of a blog topic, so I decided to write you instead.

Ruthann passed away the week before Thanksgiving. I woke up thinking, “I need to email Ruthie” and then I remembered. That’s when I thought of you because you also have a habit of showing up in my dreams. Most of the time, though you show up in my day dreams.

Even though you’ve been gone for more than twenty-five years, you are still all around me. I can smell your legendary Sunday dinners in the utensils I inherited from your kitchen, and hear your voice in the jays and blackbirds that mimic the soundtrack of your yard. I see you standing in your red plaid flannel shirt whenever I pull on a piece of red clothing. I remember you telling me I looked great in red and so I have a lot of red clothes. So did you, by the way.

Anyway, beyond dreaming about Ruthann and thinking of you, here’s what’s going on in my life: I published my first book. I know! I always knew I would write a book, but didn’t think it would be this soon. And yes, I did say “my first book.”

I guess 60 isn’t all that young, but I didn’t think I’d write my first book until after I retired. These days, however retirement is a lost concept. Come to think of it, you really didn’t retire either. You just kept on cooking up those incredible meals into your 80’s. I’ve never tasted chocolate chip cookies like the ones you baked. Please whisper your recipe in my ear one of these days.

If the truth be told, I am as close to retired as I care to get. I’m involved in my community just enough to give me social legitimacy, leaving more than enough time for writing, cooking and walking in the woods. Oh, there. You popped into my head again as I thought about the woods behind your house. What a great place to play! All of us so loved our hikes up to the sand pits.

Did you know Frankie has not been up there in years? He says he wants to keep the image in his head of what it looked like when he was a kid. He even painted a picture of it from memory.

Anyhoo, as you used to say, when I was walking in the woods today, I took stock of my mental state. Okay, that’s a fib. I interviewed myself. I know it’s weird but sometimes when I’m alone in the woods, I talk to myself. It’s amazing what I learn by talking out loud. Come to think of it, I probably started this habit right after you died and I didn’t have you to talk to anymore.

So, I was walking in the woods and I asked myself, “How are you today?” and I answered, “Pretty good” and I said “Well you sound kind of down.”
“I guess I’m feeling a little guilty.”
“How come?”
“I’m not working as hard as I used to.”
“Heh heh, I seem to recall you being resentful because you were working too hard, vowing to cut back on your responsibilities, and now that you’ve done that, you’re feeling guilty?”
“Yeah, I know. I guess if I have to choose resentment or guilt, I’ll go with the guilt.”

It’s not like I don’t do anything for anybody anymore. There goes your voice in my head again. Good point. Guilt is a symptom of a healthy conscience, so it’s a good sign to have a little twinge of guilt here and there. But no point in getting carried away.

Well, thanks for the nice chat, Nana. I do love you so!

Love, Cookie

“I still blame myself – for what, I can’t exactly say. I might as well condemn myself for choosing the wrong parents, or the wrong planet.”
– Sy Safransky, editor and publisher of The Sun

Dear Nana,

Today is the 107^th anniversary of your birth.  For as long as I can remember, you’ve been part of my life.  Thank you for all that you taught me while you were here.  Thank you for thirty-five years of unconditional love.  I think of you every day and often long for your counsel.

I love you for your sense of humor, for your extraordinary sense of justice and for your fantastic cooking. I have many memories of sitting around the table after dinner laughing at the world together and at ourselves.  You were a passionate Democrat back in the day when that party championed social justice and you devoted many hours as president of the local organization.

Born in Poland, you came to the United States as a child to rejoin your family in New York City.  At fifteen, you began working as a servant girl to an Irish family.  You learned to speak English.  At seventeen you married Frank Illo and began a family.

Your life was not without struggle.  You made a bed for your baby in a hotel dresser drawer as you and grandpa toured with the Burlesque show.  Your second child, a daughter died at an early age.  Your oldest son lied about his age and joined the war.  At one point, you were subjected to electric shock treatments for depression.

As a child, I knew nothing of your past.  All I knew was that you baked the best chocolate chip cookies I have ever eaten.  There was always a tin stocked with cookies in your kitchen. Your potato leek soup is legendary, as was your poppy seed cake.  On Summer Sundays, your two sons and their wives and eight grandchildren would gather on your lawn with Grandpa and other relatives for fried chicken, potato salad, corn on the cob and chocolate cake.

Everything you made was perfectly prepared, meticulously shopped for and beautifully presented.  I loved riding with you as you did your shopping.  We’d stop at a farm with a beautiful Jersey cow for cream and butter, the butchers for sausages, the bakery for bread and the grocery store for produce. You gave me an aluminum colander and a Pyrex bowl from your kitchen to start my own.  Thirty five years later, I still use them nearly every day.

There was always a dog named Susi in your home.  When one would die, the next new female dog to enter your household was named Susi.  You spoiled your dogs shamelessly, putting ice cubes in their water in the summer, setting down a bowl of warm coffee with half and half and honey on winter mornings, frying beef liver for their dinner and rubbing calamine lotion on their bug bites.

In return, the dogs babysat the grandkids, accompanying them through the woods and around the neighborhood.  Before I could walk, you’d place me on a blanket to be watched over by a big, black dog named “Sissy.”  I was Sissy’s little sister and took this to heart during my “dog phase.”  For a spell I ran around on all fours, barking and growling while the other kids behaved like human beings.

When I was tiny, you loaded me into the laundry cart and wheeled me around as you cleaned house.  I watched as you harvested tomatoes and chives from the garden. I listened to you sing your way through your day.  As I grew older, you taught me to cook, shop for clothes and apply makeup.  We had no secrets, you and I.  You cared enough to involve yourself in my headlong rush though life and I trusted you completely.

When I was in my twenties, I returned east and lived with you.  I remember drinking wine after dinner and dancing together in the living room. Your favorite song was “Those Were The Days.”  We’d sing it at the top of our lungs and cry along to the words.  And dance.

Love, Cookie

Those Were The Days – Lyrics

Once upon a time there was a tavern
Where we used to raise a glass or two
Remember how we laughed away the hours
And dreamed of all the great things we would do

Those were the days my friend
We thought they’d never end
We’d sing and dance forever and a day

We’d live the life we choose
We’d fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way.
La la la la…
Those were the days, oh yes those were the days

Then the busy years went rushing by us
We lost our starry notions on the way
If by chance I’d see you in the tavern
We’d smile at one another and we’d say

Those were the days my friend
We thought they’d never end
We’d sing and dance forever and a day
We’d live the life we choose
We’d fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way.
La la la la…
Those were the days, oh yes those were the days

Just tonight I stood before the tavern
Nothing seemed the way it used to be
In the glass I saw a strange reflection
Was that lonely woman really me

Those were the days my friend
We thought they’d never end
We’d sing and dance forever and a day
We’d live the life we choose
We’d fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way.
La la la la…
Those were the days, oh yes those were the days

Through the door there came familiar laughter
I saw your face and heard you call my name
Oh my friend we’re older but no wiser
For in our hearts the dreams are still the same

Those were the days my friend
We thought they’d never end
We’d sing and dance forever and a day
We’d live the life we choose
We’d fight and never lose
For we were young and sure to have our way.
La la la la…
Those were the days, oh yes those were the days