In any case...!
As I've already mentioned, I spend some special time thinking about each of my close family members every year on their brithday. On Ellen's birthday this year, Mom added to the fun. She copied all three of us girls into the email she sent the birthday gal, which included stories and three pictures. I had read through the stories and was looking at the last of the three pictures again the next day, when Tomi came up beside me:
Jenny: "You know who that is?"
Tomi: "Yeah, it's Gretchen!"
Jenny: ...that is so cool...
The picture in question is the first one, above. The second one was found while I was looking for one of the two of us together that I'd scanned last year. This one was too perfect a match (look closely at her face...), so the other photo will have to wait another year or so...
One of my favourite memories of the time surrounding Ellen's birth is that of David and me imagining how the birth was going to proceed. One of the best tales we came up with (they were, all of them, mighty bizarre) was the one which started with the very small, very wily and very fast baby-that-would-soon-be-Ellen zooming out of our mom (who was usually on the dining room table when it happened), jumping off the table, running headlong out the front door, jumping into the driver's seat of the Volkswagon van (which was conveniently waiting with her brother and sister in the drive way, keys in the ignition, engine humming, refrigerator and pantry stocked) and gunning it. From there, we went on all kinds of adventures, including but not limited to everywhere we knew in our town, our grandparents' houses and, of course, Turkey. The baby-that-would-soon-be-Ellen was a brilliant adventurer, and we were her willing adventurees.
What we got was no less brilliant: a little sparkler, a happy wee camper, a super good sport - all bundled up and topped with "blondie hair and blue eyes!"
