Celebrating SIsters

Andy and I at Ciao's for her birthday,
June 25, 2013.

When you're in your 70s, celebrating sisters take center stage.  That's what happened on a recent visit from my sister Andy from Tallahassee for a week-long celebration of her birthday!  She saw just about everyone up here in Sylvania.  We walked around the neighborhood; browsed and shopped; had a drink at Elements 112 and lunch at Chandler's Cafe; played tennis at Northview high school until it got too hot; went to a Toledo Mud Hens game with my grandsons Josh and Kyle; had family dinners; enjoyed sunsets, moon rises, and my gardens; and topped it all off with a grand birthday dinner at Ciao's restaurant. The salmon and red trout were delicious, and we sampled the portobellow musrooms ravioli, too. Ciao's chef is wonderful and we enjoyed a great meal.  Of course, we had to have the best tiramasu in town.  Incredibly smooth, creamy, and tasty. We toasted to sisters and family and many more birthdays to come. 

We also took a trip to Columbus to visit my mom's first cousin Bill Form, age 96, and his wife Joan, both retired OSU professors. They are the last of the World War II generation, the folks who remember the Depression, FDR, Pearl Harbor, the war abroad and the war at home.  "The Greatest Generation,"  Tom Brokow called them.  I think they were.   Bill, who studied under famed sociologist C. Wright Mills, many years ago, pioneered in the field of indudstrial sociology, the sociology of work and workers.  Joan  pioneered in the field of women and sociology.  They both continue to do research and write, Joan on the origin of gender differences and Bill about our Italian immigrant family. Bill's traced his and my mom's family to the Waldensians, Italian protestants,in northern .  Italy.  It's a fasinating story and Bill tells it beautifully. I always wondered why my family was protestant when every other Italian immigrant famiuly we knew was Caatholic.  Ity helped that my grandgfather Curro, my dad's da, was from a Frnch hugonaut family at some point. So Bill continues to tie together bits and pieces of our family history.  He is leaving a great legacy to our family.  

So we reminisced, my sister and I.  Good old-fashioned gatherings of the clan up North.  Sisters celebrating. Celebrating sisters. 

Next up: a trip down to Tallahassee for a gathering of the Southern clan. We can root for the sminoles or the g ators or the bulldogs, listen to nieces with Southern accents, and relive the glory days of growing up the children and grandchildren of the Greatest Generation.  In the meantime, memories sustain us! 

Andy with kids and grandkids and great-grandson Philip

Visit to Columbus to see Bill Form, age 96, our mom's
first cousin, the last of that generation, and his wife Joan;
and walks around the 'hood. . 

At a Toledo Mud Hens game..

With Mud Hens Mascot!