Some pictures make you smile a special way, accompanied by a tightening throat and tearing eyes. Here are two that do so:

This first one is my cousin Susie Woodrow Anderson, standing behind the bouquet she puts together for her Uncle Bob every year. She has an eye for bring colors together in a gentle balance. She’s been doing this for 16 years now. And I wanted to post this this year so I can always take a look at a family memory.

This second picture seems like it should have been presented first, but I don’t know, I guess I felt the finished product should be top of the post. This second one, though it obviously precedes the first one, reflects a deeper story. Notice how Susie is fussing over just how everything should be. If I’d been filming, you would hear her say how she wanted to get two of one of the blooms, but they only had one and she was disappointed and doing her best with the situation. This was no plopping of flowers in the vase. This took time. The lady on the right is Phyllis Sackmire Woodrow, my cousin Duane’s wife. They live about a mile down the road and often stop by to water the geraniums. One year, one very hot summer, they carried a milk jug of water and Phyllis fretted when they went on a trip . . . but when they returned it was flourishing and she wrote me a note about how happy she was. There is something extremely touching about this – Duane was Daddy’s first nephew, born back in the days before WW II. To be remembered is a wonderful thing.