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October 01, 2003 - 5:07 p.m.

Fall is settling in nicely here. The leaves are turning everywhere. I think, perhaps, that most of the leaves have already hit the ground in the high country, but we are still at the beginning of it here on the Front Range. The nights are nice and cool, and the days sunny, but not terribly hot, perfect weather as far as I am concerned.

I have been feeling the tug-of-war that is the analytical mind vs. the imaginative mind. If too much analytical stuff is going on in my life, my brain starts screaming for color crayons or reams of blank paper to create verbal images on.

I have been thinking lots about my grandmother of late. She's living in a nursing home, and waiting or wondering what my uncle is doing or when he is going to come by. Now understand, he goes and sees her almost every day, but often she doesn't remember if he's been by yet or not. He lets her know if he has things he has to do on a certain day, but she doesn't always remember. I think it is a combination of the drugs the nursing home gives her and the fact that she's nearly 100 years old. This is not the grandmother I think of, when I think of her. I think of that spry 70 year old woman that made we weed the garden, make my bed and mow the lawn all the summers I spent at the farm. The woman that always had a list as long as her arm of things she needed to get done. I remember the lady that made supper in the middle of the day so her son, my uncle, would have a good meal when he came in from the fields at lunch time.

I've spend over half of my life listening to stories; stories of the farm, my grandparents, or great-grandparents, stories of our family. Those stories aren't recorded anywhere, and often I find that the interest of my own boys in these stories isn't anywhere close to the awe that is in my mind when I think of them. I know that I need to record them, I guess because I think they are fascinating pieces of history. The very history that composes my life and I am pretty sure that my boys aren't going to remember any of them on their own. The formation of that story.. or stories... but in particular, the story of my grandma's life has been poking at the back of my brain for a while now. I am going to have to put something down on paper.

The other 'story' of sorts has to do with the phenomena of 'sisters'. I have a number of generations of 'sisters' stories. Beyond that is the impact that 'sisters' has had on our family. Both of my grandmothers have a lot of sisters (at least 4 each), and my mother has two sisters and I have 4 sisters. So how our family relates to one another has a great deal to do with these relationships. For the four generations that I am aware of, sisters have been MORE then sisters, they have been best friends and confidants through entire lifetimes. This is a topic I want to explore more.