For sale on Etsy

small double sided Italian script etching...

Medium double sided Italian script etching...

Large double sided Italian script etching... Leaves courtesy of the tree in our parking lot.

It's almost 1:35 p.m and I have yet to head for my husband's workshop. It's too cold to strip a piano. The weather said it was to be 58 today but it's still pretty chilly. At least I am using time wisely- doing some laundry, finally getting these pendants listed on Etsy and packaging some books I sold on Ebay.

Mostly today I am thinking about Veteran's Day. Selfishly I am glad I don't have jury duty today as I otherwise may have been sitting in circuit court today.

On a grander and more important scale, I am remembering all the Vets out there, living and dead, who have done so much to protect our country. My grandfather on my mother's side was a WWII vet, stationed in the extreme remote wilderness of Attu, Alaska for several years. Some of the worst bloodshed of WWII was fought on Attu. My mom was a tiny baby when he left, a three year old when he returned. I can't imagine not seeing my family for such a long time. I can't imagine his loneliness, or my grandmother struggling to support a household that included my mother, my great grandparents, and my great aunt, who was a high school student at the time, all on a bank teller's salary. This is how people looked out for one another back then. But she never complained, either at the time or years later, an admirable quality I wish I possessed.

While the war raged on, my grandparents kept up a correspondence, writing each other every day the personal and plain events of their lives, documenting my mom's development from an infant into a toddler and all the events that my grandfather was missing back home in Ohio. The letters are voluminous and detailed and they were saved by my grandmother for more than forty years after my grandfather's untimely departure from this life at the age of 51. After my grandmother's death in 2000, my mom discovered these letters kept in a large wooden box, preserved in order, along with tiny Eskimo dolls, postcards and the long awaited cable from my grandfather, telling his wife that he was finally coming home...

Happy Veteran's Day, everyone. Thank you for your service.