A day for remembering...

I am the child of two only children.  That doesn't mean we were every lonely -- we grew up in a home with 2 parents, 2 grandparents and 4 kids, lots of fun and plenty of love.  We rarely noticed the lack of more extended family except, maybe, on Thanksgiving when it was the same 8 of us sitting around the same table, eating the same great 3 course meal that our grandmother, Manu, cooked for us every night of the year.  Even though we did not have any aunts, uncles, or cousins by blood, we were blessed with more "fake" aunts, uncles, and cousins than anyone I knew. Our adult neighbors were all "Aunt" and "Uncle," and our parents' friends were too.  However, our New Hampshire Aunts and Uncles are the closest thing to blood relatives I could have known.

Over the past several years, when I've visited Portsmouth as an adult, I've had a series of visits to make.  Mind you, these were not obligations by any stretch of the imagination.  I love my east coast aunts, uncles, and cousins.  Over the years, we've lost most of the uncles, but the highlights of every trip east were the visits with Aunt Joanie, Aunt Betty, and Aunt Cal.  In the past 2 years, we've lost all of them.  The visit here seems a little empty without them, but today was an opportunity to say goodbye to Aunt Cal.

Aunt Cal, Erin, and me.  1989.

My "cousin" Calvin, Aunt Cal's son, and his wife Kim came by for a visit tonight.  We are staying on the Great Bay, and we sat and reminisced and told stories just a short distance away from Aunt Cal's camp that she loved.  It was NOT a palace but she came back to it year after year.  We stayed there with her for a couple days one summer.  It was tilted and tiny, and Aunt Cal slept on the porch!

Aunt Cal, me, Mimi at the "camp"

So it seemed right to stand before this place she loved, raise a glass, and say Farewell, I love you, and I'll miss you forever to my beloved Aunt Cal!