grateful for: g-ma and g-pa

Here are my grandparents a year ago, at Grandma's 70th birthday party. They are beautiful people, but Grandma's pretty sick right now. Please keep praying for her--and for Grandpa, who's busy taking good care of her.

I am grateful for their love. I am thankful for the huge garden Grandma kept when I was younger, with its tender cucumbers (cubobbers) climbing the fence. To this day, I can't smell fresh dill without remembering Grandma's herb patch in the back corner of the yard -- the patch where we found an Indian arrowhead while digging one day. I'm thankful for sleepovers, with microwave popcorn and crystal light in a big shared leather chair.

I'm thankful that Grandpa's love of reading and problem solving seeped into me. I'm thankful for their senses of humor, their kindness, their hospitality, their generosity. I'm grateful beyond words for their love.

Sometimes it's hard to remember, in the midst of an illness like cancer, that there's any room for hope. But here's a picture of Josh's miraculous radish plant, which somehow thrived on our back fire escape, in an alley with dank air and limited sunshine. Grown in dubious city dirt dug with a fork from the cigarette-butt-seasoned courtyard of our building, the plant rose to astonishing heights and burst into pink blossoms. There's a lesson in beauty and life overcoming the obstacles if I ever saw one.