Kathy Williams

Some of these events, like cuddling wee Addi, I experienced only vicariously because of voluntary quarantine after my time out of the country. So I stood back and took many pictures.

I spent time with Mom, reminiscing about our experience as writers --the fact that neither of us has ever gathered our various writings into book form. We didn't talk at all about how we came to writing; what pushed us into this mode of communication.

But I did work with my grandson, Jacob, who is just learning the wonders of reading. He's more visually oriented, telling in drawings great epic tales of worlds guarded by alien dinosaurs, taller by a hundred factor than any Earth dwellers. Sunday, we labeled a picture tale, drawn on a 15-foot section of newsprint. The "specimen's" feet stretch to the bottom with claws longer than a human is tall. Its tail's clubs with spikes reach to one top corner and its head stretches to the other.

In the middle, we wrote together the narrative of the beast, Jacob "chunking out" the hard words and spelling them for me. He is in one of those precious invisible skull stages where one can see brain cells firing, connections coming together, light bulbs glowing.

Suzannah, who is less than two years younger than he, already is hip to the "chunk out" process. She's learning to read simultaneously to him, but given to verbal flights of fancy rather than his intricate history-biology-ecology-anthropology-architecture sagas.

The two young scholars took turns holding their new cousin, silent and smiling at the new life they cradled in their arms. Then they watched their great Grandma Dot blow out the candles on her cake. The camera caught them with their lips pursed, unconsciously helping her with that exciting moment that has come for her 80 times.

Happy birthday Thursday to Terry Wayne Braxton and Priscilla Ann Barnum, both of Denison; Harold Wright, Traphena Gibson, A´aliyah Jones, Ariel Fritts. Ruby Sisemore and Barbara Boland, all of Sherman; Rhett Booher and Don Smith, both of Whitesboro; Austin Powell of Whitewright; Nathan Matter of Longview.

Happy anniversary Thursday to Bob and Carolyn Patton of Platter, Okla., 50 years; Roger and Lorie Dawson of Denison, 27 years.