Bud kept a war diary. At seventeen, he joined the Navy, and was sent to France where he wielded a rifle capable of firing multiple rounds. Though he inhaled enough mustard gas to give him emphysema, he loved to smoke cigars. A bald man, Bud had a large freckle on the top of his head. He pointed to the freckle and told his grandchildren, “This is a nail head. The nail holds my head on.” His wife, Dot, draped doilies over the backs of all the armchairs in the living room. She said to her grandchildren, “The doilies absorb the grease from Bud’s head.” When Bud retired he didn’t know what to do, so Dot told him to pick up sticks in the adjacent vacant lot. From branches and twigs, he built the cabin. His granddaughter adored the small leather hinges, the tiny metal screw eye as doorknob. As a young child, she loved looking through the small cabin windows, admiring the small rooms that suggested the possibility of small people living inside. Once, when she was in college, and many years after Dot had died, her grandfather pushed his tongue into her mouth during a goodnight kiss. She jerked back, and hurried off to join her friends at their campsite on the Florida shore.

In her cookbooks, hundreds of dog-eared recipes. Or sometimes she wrote on strips of paper: I like this because. Everybody thought she was a redhead; she was the cool mom on the block with shades and wigs. She cooked her favorite five, though her son only remembers three: Hawaiian pork chops, chuck wagon mac, and BBQ spare ribs. How he hated Hawaiian pork chop night. Even Mom's ribs weren' t that good. (God bless her.) The first meal she cooked for her husband, chicken á la king, she crushed the whole garlic bulb into the skillet instead of one clove. Mom believed in recipes, the microwave, and Wendy's Chili. (Belly up to a pot of rich and meaty, award-winning taste.) She'd buy four or five cups and keep them in the refrigerator. In the new condo, she never turned on the oven; her son found the broiler pan still wrapped inside.

It's become a family comedy, of sorts. Everyone knows of Mom's ring, but no one knows where it came from. Mom conspired with Dad's family to get them married. All Dad had to do was show up. So he purchased several rings throughout their marriage because Mom always said, "you never bought me an engagement ring." Dad remembers that this one must have been inexpensive because he and Mom were broke. Their son Allen learned that it's a moonstone, or a Feldspar mineral, a stone the Romans once believed to be formed from moonlight. During Mom's frequent hospital stays, the ring stayed on her bedside table at home. As a boy, Allen liked to sit in his Mom's lap with her arms around him. He'd play with her cloudy-blue ring, spin it, and move it from finger to finger. Her hands, like Allen's, were long and skinny-she was six feet tall and very thin. Allen never minded how his hands appeared because they looked just like his Mom's. He recalls her hands (and that ring) more than her face.