GUEST – Marilee Brothers

BOOK COVERS & GRAND GIRLS

When Deb Dixon emailed me the proposed book cover for Moon Spun, I thought, “Hmm, that girl looks familiar,” and immediately filed it away in a dusty part of my brain labeled, “Things to think about when I have more time.” Now you know why it’s dusty.

We recently had a visit from our daughter-in-law and two granddaughters, Madelyn and Arianna. Since Maddie and Ari make their debut as hedge row pixies in Moon Spun, they were anxious to see the cover. I led them to the computer and opened the file. My daughter-in-law exclaimed, “I don’t believe it! She looks like Madelyn!” The aforementioned thought woke up and shook off the dust. Bingo! We had our very own cover girl.

I’m sure you can guess what happened next. We simply had no choice. We had to re-create the Moon Spun cover with eight-year-old Madelyn as our model. I grabbed my digital camera which I despise. It’s teensy, weensy buttons have caused me moments of utter frustration, immediately followed by colorful cursing. I silently promised to control myself. After all, I was in the presence of children.

We chose an outdoor setting next to our flowering plum tree. Daughter-in-law, Trini, arranged Madelyn’s hair and positioned her in the correct pose. It was then we discovered it was practically impossible for the child to not smile. She’s a naturally happy little girl and comes from a long line of beautiful, photogenic Latino women with sparkling smiles, shiny dark hair and expressive brown eyes. Madelyn was born to smile. It’s in her DNA. Little sister? Not so much. She may have inherited a recessive gene from Grandma Marilee. The one that goes, “Give me three good reasons I should do what you say.”

The photo shoot was complicated by Arianna demanding we take a picture of her hanging from a tree limb and Mauli, our Labrador retriever, who kept wandering into the scene. Finally, Trini snapped, “Madelyn, close your mouth and look sad,” and we got the shot we wanted. I fumbled around trying to press the right button to review the pictures and the display went black. Trini said, “Oops, I think Grandma deleted the picture.” Well, damn! Who has fingers that tiny?

More fumbling ensued as my evil camera chuckled to itself, thwarting every effort to locate the picture I just knew had to be perfect. Muttering to myself, I persevered and finally found it lurking in a dark alley along with a dozen other photos I’d given up hope of ever recovering. Yes! Grandma didn’t delete the picture after all.

I have the book cover and the picture of Madelyn pinned up on the wall next to my computer where I can see them every day. They bring me great joy. Do you believe in magic? I do. How else can one explain the serendipity of the girl on my book cover and granddaughter looking so much alike? As for that danged camera . . . its days are numbered!

Continuing with the Happy theme...

I loved Christie's post from the other day where she decided to just 'call the whole thing happy'. Happy is good. I figure everyone else probably agrees that it's good. Strike that. Happy is great!! I'm generally a happy person. I've been known to smile and laugh even when nothing is funny. I just like it better that way and for the most part, I do feel that I can chose to be happy or chose to be sad. Granted, there are times in everyone's life - mine most definitely included - where sad, unfortunately, takes over. We lose friends, we lose family, we lose beloved pets, we lose jobs, we lose heart.
Loss is never easy, but with perserverance and determination and a little help from our friends, we can rise above.

I find that it helps to surround myself with things that make me smile. I'm happiest, for instance, when I'm surrounded by my kids and grandkids. Now granted, we only have one son but our daughter-in-law (who truly is a goddess) is like a daughter to us. and those babies - oh, how they make me smile. Here's a photo that makes me laugh every time I see it. It's of our youngest granddaughter, Hailey, 18 months, just chillin' and hangin' at Gramma and Grampa's after having some fun with a garden hose. Is that a look of smug contentment or what?


















Here's another photo of the older kids,
Kayla 8, Lane 3, and Blake 5 up at our
cabin in Minnesota. It's a little hard for
you to see but next to Blake, on the
ground at the lake shore is, with a little imagination, a summer shelter for the gnomes who live in the forest. There's a little shelter made out of rocks, a table made from a flat rock, a tiny campfire over which the kids built a tripod of sorts to hold a small copper kettle for the gnomes to cook their fish in. Sadly, a minnow from the bait bucket bought the farm on this one but the kids were all excited about the gnomes getting excited when they found their fish dinner. Oh - and that white thing that looks like a plastic container? Well,
it's a plastic container that Kayla used to make a swimming pool for the gnomes, complete with diving board because, well, they probably wouldn't want to swim in the lake, right? This photo makes me happy because searching for the gnomes made the little ones happy.

BTW - just in case you think gnomes aren't real, here's a photo of their permanent home up the hill from our cabin. Look close and you'll see the door set into the base of a large rock, several
little white quartz rocks (proof that it's a gnome house because gnomes love white quartz, don't you know), and a small garden of clover. Just because you can't see the gnomes (no one EVER sees a gnome) doesn't mean they don't exist. The other thing you can't see is that this little house is hidden deep in the forest, a towering white pine tree is rooted in the rock above the door and birch and aspen flank it on all sides. Again, this photo makes me smile because of all the time the little ones spend searching for white quartz to take to the gnomes as gifts, the blueberries they left behind when their picnic table is set up and because of the notes the Gnomes wrote on birch bark paper and left for the children, thanking them for being so thoughtful.

Here's another photo of all 4 kids on the little beach near the cabin. This picture also makes me happy because it makes me remember that when they weren't writing gnome notes or figuring out ways to sneak up on them and actually spy one, they were in the water or on the beach or roasting marshmallows and making memories.

Less astute readers might have decided by now that this post is really about my grand kids. Well, maybe it is, just a little, but truly it's about happiness. The happiness I find in their bright eyes and excited smiles and their imaginations as they swear they saw a gnome running through the woods or sailing off in a little boat, or saw smoke from a tiny campfire in the woods, or saw a princess standing on the turrets of the sandcastles they built and that Margaret, the Brittany, or Ernie, the Lab, invariably trampled in their excitement over finding the children on the beach.

So now it's your turn. What makes you happy? Be it big or small or somewhere in between, what never fails to take you to that happy place? And don't say it's laughing at me because I have the date screwed up on all of those photos :o(