the hat you made me, Aunt Betha,” Lydia’s feathery voice came drifting out of my answering machine from her Little House in Minnesota. I’m wearing it all day today. I really love it. Thank you, Aunt Betha.” Sounds corny, I know, but I really did think of Lydia with every stitch. Her sweet message confirmed […]

So Monday night I got home and there was no impossibly frantic tail-wagging and jumping up on the hind legs. And I felt, for the first time since Beth left for Morristown, alone. It was a particular kind of aloneness that I’ve felt before. Like the weeks on end I spent in Urbana while Beth […]

  Last week Sheelagh — my first-ever volunteer reader — and her friend Beni came from Northern Ireland to spend 8 days in Chicago with us. Sheelagh was an exchange student from Belfast when I met her in Urbana, IL in 1986. She’d signed up for volunteer work at the University of Illinois to “meet […]

Mike and I met in Urbana. Our son Gus was born in Urbana. My first Seeing Eye dog, Dora, retired in Urbana. When Hanni first came home to live with us, we lived in Urbana. We love Urbana. Our son Gus moved to the Bethesda Lutheran Home in Watertown, Wisconsin in 2003. That’s the year […]