Hi, Daddy.

Today is the second anniversary of my father's death. He would've been 70 in June of that year. (My mom died seven years prior.)

There's not much to say when both your parents are gone, except "It sucks."

I could write until I keeled over and still not convey their respective essences. I am just not that good of a writer.

It's odd: I feel almost like my father was not someone I knew personally, but a storybook character I grew up with. Which is really bizarre, considering that we were very close, yet I was completely aware of his human flaws. It's just that... I will never be able to hear his opinion about anything important to me again. I can tell him; he can't respond except as a whisper of what I would expect he'd say.

I'm starting to feel the same way about my mother. I suppose it might have something to do with the genealogy research I'm doing, because I'm hearing perspectives from my father's brother and my mother's sister. They're becoming narratives.

I guess I'll light a mental yahrtzeit candle and let it go at that. I'm not Jewish, but I like the idea.

ATCs, etc.

Well, thank y'all so much for the praise and flattery about the ATC with the transparency door! I did decide to make a couple more; one's done, the other will be soon. (Tally, check your mailbox.)

I realized I'd only done two with hedgehogs (part of the "Forest Floor" theme of this year's Artfest) so I might incorporate them into a couple more ATCs. Plus, woodland mythical creatures -- when else am I going to get such an opportunity to use the various brass/transparency/stamped wings in my stash? This is also a great chance to put to work some of that Greek mythology clogging my brain.

In other news, I made some calls to relatives about more genealogy stuff. I'm distantly related to the head pastor of a prominent African American church in the South, and he clarified a couple of relationships. It gets hard to keep track of these people, since most of them were farmers with lots of kids, who named their children after their siblings: "Bob Smith" names his daughter "Mary" after his sister "Mary," who was named for her aunt "Mary."

But I figured out that if I can get a death certificate for the pastor's grandfather, I'll figure out more about my own grandfather's female relatives. Generally, men are easier to track down than women, since their names usually stay the same for life. (And they're never listed as "Mr. Wife's Name" in official documents.) But our family genealogy expert explained to me that death certificates often list a person's mother by her maiden name -- which of course helps you find other relatives. Here's hoping.

Good Christmas

This year was a lot more fun for The Husband and me too, because The Boy was old enough to tear into his presents himself. Here, he's pulling one of the characters from the movie "Cars" out of the gift bag, one of four he received. (Mommy is lazy. Plus, she buys good wrapping paper and uses it to make art.)

The Husband made Christmas dinner, with our personal cultural references: collard greens with kale, sweet potato latkes (with potato starch as a binder instead of egg, in deference to The Boy's allergy), homemade brown sugar applesauce, and pot roast. Oooh, you should've just been there for the smells...

I also made the long-distance calls to relatives and said hey. My mother's sister, who's the nexus of many genealogy contacts and provided many of the stories I've learned, remembered another tidbit that day. Apparently her favorite aunt ran what you might call a speakeasy or private club, out of her apartment! (The Husband makes an excellent point that the rebellious aunts are usually the favorites.)

My aunt remembers going to see Aunt D on Easter Sunday as a child, with my grandparents and mother. Apparently Easter was a busy time for Aunt D, so my grandfather went to her door and brought her out of the apartment to see the kids. (See, carefully avoiding any corrupting influences.) Aunt D oohed and ahhh'd over their dresses, spent some time chitchatting, and then went back inside. Aunt D never married, but I'm thinking that might've been because she couldn't be bothered. She lived to a ripe old age, though -- 87, the same year my grandfather died at age 95.

We have returned. You may now recommence pilgrimages to the Queen's court.

I got a couple nice pictures from our visit to Nana and Peepaw's, where they have sunshine. We have to import ours at this time of the year. I'll put them in a new post late tonight.

I'm also almost finished with the current commission (that I should've done ages ago). It's a custom notebook, this one with spiral rings and acid-free paper. (Go to my Flickr account to see the first commission, on which I used the same kind of notebook.) That's what I was working on this morning.

I'm finally getting a chance to use this plastic rosary, and I've painted it to look like it's copper. Part of it turned out almost exactly the way I wanted it to; it's the color of an old penny. (Thanks, Michael.) But another part was darker, like a pretty grimy penny. And the rosary beads look more like black pearls than copper beads. It still works, but I wish I could remember how much of each color I layered onto the plastic, so I can get the same color every time. I'd repaint it, but I'm afraid to layer on more paint and then quick-dry it with my heat gun. The rosary bits are small, and I'm sure I've already melted some of the detail work. So I'm officially Quitting While I'm Ahead on that portion of the project.

In other news, I made a few calls to distant relatives to try to find out more information about my family tree. I started these conversations early this year, because I was feeling like my brother and I were the Last Mohicans. Both my parents are dead, and nearly all my direct relations are back East. So I'm filling a little of the void this way.

My brother's mother-in-law has done most of the heavy lifting. She's quite the expert. She's extracted individual information from the US Census and other public records into several reference books for genealogical societies. When my first niece was born, she decided to research our side of the family so Number One Niece would know as much as possible about both her mother and father's families.

But I think I'll wait until after the new year to make any more calls. I called one cousin on my mom's side, and his mother is in hospice (might have passed away by now). Then I emailed one of my father's cousins, to ask if her 93-year-old father could remember something -- and it turns out he died on Thanksgiving. I recklessly made a third call to another paternal cousin, and broke my streak. She and her father, who's had a few strokes but is okay, are trying to jog his memory by talking to a third cousin.

More on the art later.