What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child. ~George Bernard Shaw

The first time I heard that preschool had any real significance was on Cheers—Fraiser and Lillith raced around trying to get Fredrick in the most prestigious preschool. I thought it was a good show wearing out—how could preschool be funny? Woody Allen would never show a flashback or see his psychoanalyst to bemoan his parents’ choice of preschools for him. In order to be funny, it has to be important thus causing anxiety when it isn’t done right. Falling in love is funny, death is funny, mean girls in the cafeteria are funny because they have social significance. When people need to act right (of course they rarely do), they freak out hence funny. We laugh out of that anxiety. Preschool should not be anxiety producing.

Not that my preschool didn’t have anxiety producing elements. My cousin Eric and I attended school in the dark basement of the Croatian Center. There was one nun and many scissors. Our Poppa a policeman picked us up in his patrol car where we rode in the back like criminals. Between the dark basement, the nun and the scissors, it probably looked like a crime scene to him. So yes, lots to satirize in this situation—the characters, the props but preschool was nothing more than another place to play.

Unfortunately, in the intervening years preschool has increased its social significance and thus its ability to produce anxiety. Preschool has become the first and last golden stop on the long road to school.

Our city public school system is busted especially here in Buffalo. If you live in the city, you have three choices for school—break your bank, break with your ideals, or break your kid. The schools I’ve found are public, private, charter and homeschooling. If you can afford a private education, there are top notch schools but we can’t, even the nursery school we sent Sam to--The Waldorf School. As for the Catholic schools, we have 2 nieces that go there and last year, Sophie came home and said, “The kids at school wouldn’t vote for Obama because he kills babies.” Their anti abortion stance starts early and this is how kids interpret it. I’ve already survived a year with a nun and many scissors; I best not stretch my “pro”clivities. Charter schools seem as if it’s a means of culling out the unwanted, busting the teachers’ union while getting public funding. I want teachers to get paid more—there’s a good chance they might know something if there is a benefit to knowing it. As for homeschooling, I don’t want Sam chained to my psyche anymore than he already is. I admit I’m a public school girl—democratic in most areas of my life.

I wish there were announcements that everyone in the city had to hear just like back in Junior High. I’d steal the microphone and blare out my opinion, “If you want to fix our city, fix our public schools. If they were as good as the suburban ones, people would begin to move in, rather than sprawl out.”

Do you sense my anxiety?

I did find a preschool for Sam. His friend Ava’s mom suggested I go to Westminster’s Open House. It is a big preschool in a little schoolhouse behind Westminster Presbyterian Church. Sam is enrolled in their Universal Pre-K program through the Buffalo Public Schools. This school has Sam written all over it. It has three playgrounds and three gyms. My boy is physical. Activities are set up around the room (Montessori style) so the child is guided by their own interest and curiosity. And there are kids galore—interracial kids, muckety-muck kids, low income kids, special needs kids and working class kids like Sam. Plus they offer a program for kids born in the months of October, November and December for parents who don’t want to send their kids to kindergarten as the youngest in their class, i.e. Sam’s parents. Whew, one extra year to fret over what’s next.

My friend Mary (Max’s Mama) and I have begun bandying about a question: as parents when are we predetermining what our child is like and when are we honoring who our child is? Sam doesn’t like green food and he’s not the most introspective kid. But I can’t stop offering vegetables and to think he’ll never look out a window to daydream...hard to believe.

Even though I can’t predetermine who Sam will be, I do see him continually running in one direction. At Westminster, I see him easily slipping into a good time—squishing play-doh, trying to boss the other kids and teachers, and raking leaves.

His personality seems complete but I need to stay honest: I do have an agenda for Sam’s life and since it guides my decisions anyway, I should state it outright.

I want him to spend lots of time in the fresh air because it promotes good health. I want him to sleep lots and eat good food and then play and play and play outside some more until it’s time to come into eat good food and sleep some more. I want him to grow tall and hale in the bosom of his family (immediate and extended) and learn about stories and math and botany and world history on the grounds of a good school, to grow strong enough to hear the sound of cheering when he scores a goal and to learn with the same fierce curiosity that he once played and to go off on six or seven good adventures in which he travels to other countries for more than one week jaunts, to accomplish physical feats such as climbing a mountain or deep sea diving, to have good friends, to find true love, to have a job that is fulfilling and provides him enough money to have a family and to do this before I’m too old to pick up my grandchildren, to commit to that family. I want him to be kind and thoughtful, to know love and redemption, to have a meaningful and happy life and not die before the age of 90. And I want him to tell me that he wants something entirely different and for him to tell what that is.

I have no idea what school will help accomplish my mission.

There is a forum meeting at Westminster this Thursday in which area schools send representatives to meet with parents. And so I continue on with my quest.

But then again, we could just move to the suburbs.


There are way too many pictures and two more entries so scroll on down.

A Moment with Sam

While we were camping I made an offhanded comment to Dave about peeing in the woods at night. I said, “I should look first before I drop my pants, a raccoon might have bitten my butt.”

Generally, Sam doesn’t often pay attention to what I have to say because a) if it’s about him, I’m usually telling him what to do or b) it isn’t about him, it’s about something he could care less about—facebook, family politics, gossip, black and white movies. I consider myself fortunate that I have yet to hear my conversation verbatim coming from his mouth. And Sam isn’t easily scared, not by movies or vampires or Frankenstein (we call things like that toys for your imagination. Toys aren’t scary). But my comment about raccoons biting butts was very scary to him.

At the campground, there was a tree lined trail called Raccoon Run. As we started down it, he jumped in my arms, telling me the Raccoons would bite HIS butt.

When it was time for bed, he told me he was too scared to sleep. I crawled into bed with him. Now I was a scaredy-cat kid. I was afraid of ghost, astro space travel (which is when your soul flies around while you sleep—it was tough being a kid in the 70s), home invasion, fires, etc. I told myself that I would never try to rationalize away my child’s fear, because the more any adult talked about the unlikelihood of home invasion and astro space travel, the more I thought it about it, the more scared I became. With Sam, I tried to think of the least scary thing in the world. And what came to my mind was Lawrence Welk.

I told him about my Granny and how she watched the show on a small color TV that was on Grandma Betty’s kitchen table, how on the show all the women wore chiffon skirts, how each were a different pastel color—sky blue, cotton candy pink, sunshine yellow, how their hair was high, and how frosty their eye-shadow was, how the men’s hair never moved and was always shiny, how Lawrence’s hair was wavy and when he spoke to the camera, he turned to side to show off his accordion. And after everyone danced, sang and drank champagne, they would end each show with the song, “Goodnight, sleep tight and pleasant dreams to you. Here’s a wish and a prayer that all your dreams come true.”

After I thought Sam was fast asleep because Lawrence Welk always had the effect on me, I tried to quietly slip out of the room but before I could leave, he asked, “What other show did you watch?” So I told him about the Waltons.

Click Take A Pic

What’s new at Castle Ferguson (Sam was a knight this year for Halloween, I was a serving wench and Dave was a dragon (who looked a lot like a dinosaur) hence the Castle claim)

Sam takes pictures. As you will see, he does know how to compose. I put the camera on auto, let him compose his shot (and he does take the time to compose) and then he snaps.

Dave is starting his second year of his three year nursing program. He’s made the Dean’s list and even though it’s a might stressful working full time and going to school, he’s found what likes and is good at. As for what Sam thinks…a day that has “No work, no school” is his favorite.

We finally installed our staircase—thank you Q and M contracting. Sam’s friends can come over without the fear of accident and lawsuits.

Uncle Scott lives here again. He’s having a horrible time finding a job, but as I keep telling him, “isn’t everyone.” Although it turns out, not the peops in S. Dakota. It’s the only state with low unemployment rate and their economy is growing but we don’t have oil wells here in S. Buffalo.

Peter Pan our first pet, a beta fish, arrived and shortly there after was flushed. Sam said a-not-so tearful goodbye as Peter Pan circled the drain.

We bought a new car, doing our part to stimulate the economy. We ditched the Jeep for a Mazda 5—the mini-est mini van. Although while doing the research for what car to buy, Dave never used the word “mini” or “van”. He knows me too well. Sam calls it the Batmobile. Zoom. Zoom.

When Skies are Grey

I recently had my 7th and hopefully final miscarriage. According to Einstein, the definition of insanity is “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. But when there was such a one as Sam to be had, it’s hard not to try again and again and 5 more times. The fertility doctor had told me, given my reproductive limitations; Sam was “a miracle.”

I awoke to the signs and symptoms of miscarriage on our last day at the Adirondacks; after a long drive home, I went to the ER that night. They wheeled me up to the sonogram room to see what was what but then parked me outside. As Dave and I waited, a girl who could not have been older than 16, fully pregnant and accompanied by her hooligan baby daddy was wheeled from the room and parked in the hallway next to me. She and I waited with our wheelchairs back to back like the opposite sides of a fertility coin. She was young and fruitful while my fertility was ebbing away. She whined about getting fat and enforced bed rest; I didn't need the sonogram to tell me my pregnancy was over.

Often, I think of Sam’s life as if it were it were a biography in progress. Usually parents are given a few lines of exposition before the action of a life unfolds. I worry that my few lines will be this characterization: Lesa Marie nee Quale Ferguson was an insecure, creative, disorganized woman who allowed the disappointment of her many miscarriages to make her depressed and become an embittered shadow in Sam’s young life. He reached out to his father.

I try to banish these thoughts. After I wasted many years despairing that I would never marry or own a home or have babies, I promised myself that I wouldn't let present disappointments make me a pessimist. If I had known that my future held Dave and Sam, I would have enjoyed myself more or at least not holed away in bachelor apartments with endless movies from Rain City Video. Maybe there is a future for me in which all these damn miscarriages make sense. I'm supposed to trust that…not likely. I'm just disappointed.

I hate how cruel life can be. This time, life seemed to be foreshadowing a happy outcome. Throughout my short pregnancy, I kept bumping into this friend of the family who at age forty-four had a healthy baby. The weekend we were in the Adirondacks, Sam was fascinated with our friends’ new baby. He picked her flowers, asked to hold her, gently patted her head and gave her many kisses. He would be a loving brother.

Generally when Sam and I are together, he wants to be somewhere else—with the three girls next door or at Gramma Betty’s eating cookies or in his imaginary world where he and Conor are allowed to watch the new Transformers movie together.

Maybe he likes to be elsewhere because in our little family, I'm the bad cop—the one who enforces tooth brushing and napping and not letting him whack the neighbor girls. When Sam is overtired and hits a wall, he tells me that I'm ugly and stupid. I roll with it and continue to enforce, As Sgt. Joe Friday would say, “Just doing my job, Sir”.

As this miscarriage progressed, suddenly Sam wouldn't leave my side. He threw a tantrum when Uncle Scott came to pick him up. And, he snuck away from Jen my lovely, lovely neighbor who had so generously invited him over to play. Every night, he climbed in bed with me and Dave. He snuggled flush against me. As Groucho Marx once said, “If you were any closer, I'd be in back of you.”

Up to now, Sam has rarely been needy. But then, I've never been a shadow. I’m not sure I know how to put this miscarriage thing behind me. I am sure I can’t be a shadow in Sam’s life. I guess I could start by rewriting these few lines of exposition: Lesa Marie nee Quale Ferguson was an insecure, creative, disorganized mother, who because of her many miscarriages understood fully that she had been blessed.

There are 2 more entries so scroll on down.

Occasions

oc⋅ca⋅sion [uh-key-zhuh] –noun a special or important time, event, ceremony, celebration, etc.: Owen’s and Max’s birthdays were quite the occasions. Sophie’s first communion was quite an occasion. Bridget’s baptism was quite an occasion. Sophie and Caeley's feis in Cleveland was quite an occasion. Camping at the Adirondacks was quite an occasion. Sam’s first dance recital was quite an occasion.

I am Sam

As most parents do, Dave and I put much thought and care in naming our child. Initially, I wanted to name him Texas because I wanted a flock of children named after states; Dave wasn’t sure what name he wanted but Texas wasn’t on his list of possibilities. He liked tried and true names, such as Gordon and Brenda. He did convince me that whatever name we chose, it should be a name that could weather all ages. Texas may be a fun name for a 2 year old and maybe an 80 year old but as a 40 year old man with a family, Ol’ Tex Ferguson might have a difficult time finding and keeping a job.

I put the name Samuel on our list of possible names for many reasons not the least of which was the vision of the 40 year old handing our resumes. Dave and I agreed if we chose this name, we would call him Sam. There are many good Sams out there—Sam I am from Green Eggs and Ham, Uncle Sam, and when I was a kid, my mom called me Sam after Samantha Stevens from Bewitched. If Sam turned out to be a Yuppie, he could introduce himself as Samuel. But it was a name among many names. At the time we crossed Texas (as well as all other state names) and Brenda off our list, we still didn’t know the baby’s gender.

Then when I was five months pregnant, Gram, Scott and I took a drive out to “The Amish” (my Gram’s name for that part of Western NY) to have a piece of furniture made. We drove up to an old bat and board barn and as I got out of the car, the door of the barn flew open and a bunch of blond boys in their black hats, suspenders and bright blue shirts ran toward us. And right behind them, dressed identically, a man walked out of the barn and said, “Hello, my name is Samuel.” I knew right then without sonogram confirmation of the baby’s gender that I would have a boy and I would name him Samuel.

The weekend Sam was born, my great Aunt Pat sent me a card telling me that in the Old Testament, Samuel was born to Hannah, an older woman who had tried unsuccessfully for years to have children, she pleaded to God for a child and when she had her son, she named him Samuel because it means, “God listened.”

My infatuation with names is not always so fun for Sam, my literal minded 3 year old. I will let people call him what they will except for the racist Sambo. The people in the neighborhood tend to call him Sammy. One day he asked me, “Mama, why does Ella call me Sammy?” I told him that is how some names work and listed names you can put a y at the end of, “Billy, Paigey, Owey, Danny, Bethy…”

He stopped me from my unending list, “But, my name is just Sam.”

Dave and I may have given him his name but at some point he came into possession of it. His name’s origin is of no concern to him. It’ll be years before he understands the connections to the Old Testament or Bewitched. I may like to riff on names but that’s all fluff to him. His identity is forming and it is forming around this name—Sam, “just Sam”. Already he has marked it as his own.

For Gaga this Mother's Day

While I was pregnant with Sam, my mother sat me down for one of her talks. She informed me that she would love her grandchild but her life was full and she didn’t want to be one of those grandmothers who spend their twilight years doting. She would be busy. I’ve had more than one of these talks with my mother—when I went away to school, when I was about to be married. I took her declarations in stride. For all her adventurousness and travel lust, my mother doesn’t like change especially when I’m the one doing the changing.

My mother lives by a set of rules and she doesn’t understand why others don’t have the good sense to live by them as well. To be fair, they’re a good set of rules—be good to others, take care of yourself emotionally and physically, don’t be excessive except for walking (there is no end to walking) and do what you have a passion for. She must look in wonder at her children—both excessive except for walking which means we’re not taking care of ourselves and our passions seem to shift and drift.

Right before Sam was born, she worried. She feared that the pregnancy and the C-section would do me in—if I had only taken better care of myself, if she had only insisted on one more walk…thank goodness my mother-in-law, a nurse—who according to mom are people trained in competence and good sense—was there to allay some of her fears. But then Sam was born, I became background noise.

It seems there’s a significant difference between a theoretical grandchild and an actual grandchild. You can’t smell the top of theoretical grandchildren’s heads, swaddle them nor gaze into their recently-arrived-from-oblivion eyes.

I became a mother and a Sam Delivery System—from what I’ve read I’m not the only daughter to have gone through this type of transformation. And my mother’s Declaration of Independence from the tyrannical state of Grandmotherhood went right out the hospital window. I realized this when in the hospital I woke at 3am to a vision: my mother who had draped herself and Sam in long flowing bedding swayed about the room with him, singing lullabies—appearing to me like apparitions from a 19th century novel. At first I thought it was the drugs…

Sam has power, a power my brother and I never possessed, to drive my mother to express excess. And oh baby baby, she is excessive with her attention, affection and need to please and tend to him. In his presence, her world found its centrifugal force. While she is super-grandma to him, she’s absent to anyone else in the room. And she can’t grasp that he radiates goodness and light for a few; he isn’t the light bulb for everyone in the room.

And here is why I chose pictures of Ava for this entry.

Nancy, Mom’s BBF (as in Best Buffalo Friend), had her first granddaughter 6 months before Sam was born. Nancy is super-grandma too and suffers from the same singular devotion. The four of them, Mom, Sam, Nancy and Ava, can be seen around and about town beginning at Trinity (many friendships seem to begin there including Mom and Nancy’s) to Music and Me to Lisa Taylor Dance, from Sweetness to the Globe Market, from Shea’s Theater to the Science Spot even at Talty’s tavern for some St. Paddy’s Day fun, Mom and Nancy supervise their grandchildren’s cultural development. Grandmothers offer a gateway to the community outside the nuclear family and that is what Sam’s and Ava’s grandmothers offer them.

During one of mom’s many travels (she reserved a few rights from the discarded declaration), I took Sam to dance class instead of his Gaga. I forgot his shoes and his sticker card; Sam came undone and wanted to go home and I too began to emotionally unwind and wanted to go home. Nancy whispered to Ava. Ava took off her shoes, gave them to Nancy and reached for Sam’s hand. Relieved, he took her hand and together they strolled into the dance studio, shoeless. And she left her card with her Gammy as well; after class they burst out of the studio with stickers on their t-shirts. Nancy and Ava’s kindness and Sam and Ava’s solidarity leveled me. My three year old son already has a life long friend—a friendship born out of Grandma Love.

There are 2 more new entries so scroll on down.

Activate

I’ve complained ad nausea about how children today are so activity bound, they live in the cars strapped down, and there isn’t enough time being home and bored. No one seems to appreciate the power of boredom—that blank space where the imagination begins to flourish. I guess I don’t believe it either because I’m looking for a 3 year old soccer program for the summer. Right now he’s learning to ice skate, dance, and he’s attending the Waldorf Nursery Program. And that doesn’t cover the myriad of other activities, church stuff and family events. I rationalize this by saying that Sam is THAT kid and he is. He thrives on social events and physical activity. If he was more like me, we’d hang out at home and watch the paint dry into landscapes of faraway kingdoms. He is already so social that he first few weeks at Waldorf, I wasn’t sure who was getting socialized—me or him.

Here is a group of moms and oftentimes one father who pass in the parking lot and what a cross section of parenthood: the stay-at-home moms who’ve just let their only and first-borns alone at school for the first time, hovering in the parking lot, wondering if the best thing would be to break their kid out of there; the mother of five and the father of 2 who give us a nod of “been there done that” before they dash off to get in a work out or enjoy a quiet moment at home; and the working moms trying to make all good things happen in a day. No matter how different our circumstances, it’s so refreshing for me to see other parents navigating this time of life when parent and child are braving new worlds separately.

Goofing

Sam is a goof. Here are some random things about Sam:

He likes to pounce and roars like a tiger. His favorite toys are foam swords that he plays knights and when he gets you, he says “Touché”; or he’ll play pirates but he gets to be “Mr.” Hook (little did anyone know that Captain Hook was once a gentlemen). He likes eggs for breakfast; oatmeal makes him gag. He cuts with scissors and he’s good at it—too good. He named the sock monkey Grandma Joyce made him, Bernice Peanut. His latest favorite movie is Shrek but Cars was his first favorite movie and the first movie he went to see at the theater was Wall-E. Now he calls Ava, E-Eva because she was Wall-E’s love. When I told him Conor was going to Norway, Sam said, “No, Conor comes here on the airplane. Norway’s closed.” Seems as though Sam gets direct reports from the embassy there. His bedtime favorite song is This Old Man—he sings along. His first lullabies were Mercedes Benz and King of the Road because those were the only songs that I knew all the words but then Uncle Scott pointed out they songs about drinking and smoking so I added All the Pretty Little Horses until I found out it was a song sung by slaves to their white charges and the lyrics include “The bees and the butterflies pickin' at its eyes.” So even though there is a “paddy-whack” in This Old Man, I’m sticking with it. His favorite book at bedtime is Horton, Where the Wild Things Are and Noah’s Ark Pop-up Book. Daddy’s favorite book to read is Caroline Kennedy’s Collection of Poetry. I think this puts Sam to sleep. And so he is right now. Sweet Dreams.

The Bananas

Recently we’ve been doing a child swap with the Paisleys. Max comes here one week and Sam goes to Max’s the other. It’s nice.

They get along great although they couldn’t be more different from each other: Max likes his hands clean; Sam likes to dump and spread. Dave calls them Felix and Oscar—they are the Odd Couple. Even though Max has perfect diction and a larger vocabulary than most adults, he still seeks Sam’s advice, “Can I pick my nose, Sam?”

Watching Max hop into Sam’s crib for his every-other-week bounce, paw through our CD collection, and point to the cupboard with the nutty bars has given me a dose of déjà vu.

Our childhood friendships give us that rare opportunity to be steeped in someone else’s family life.

When I was a kid, my friends’ houses were this amalgamation of mystery and familiarity. In Michele’s pantry, her mother kept a never ending supply of vanilla wafers vs. at Gaby’s house, her father served food that seemed to come from a field rather than the supermarket—wild rice and berries. At Tiffany’s house you could jump from bed to bed while her asthmatic brother tried to keep up. Some houses you could scoot down the rug covered stairs on your bottom; and hidden in the attic of one, you could page through dusty medical journals with pictures of weird skin conditions. Denise had a pool with a giant bubble over it. Dink had 3 older sisters that made every sleep over seem like the eve of a grand ball. And at Becky’s house, we’d sit on the deck, listen to Van Halen, and eat yogurt mixed with brown sugar as if we were already 20 yrs. old.

This summer while we were in Ashland, Brigid and Rex reminisced about Quale house—loud, messy, and spirited. And yet, my friends didn’t seem separate from my family life. They became so thoroughly ensconced in our daily rituals, they were players. No childhood memory is complete unless it includes Cooper coming through our kitchen window to have the last brown banana.

And so the cycle begins with Sam. When he comes home from Max’s house, he tells me where the cat hides, and how Margaret piles pillows beneath the ottoman so they can jump, and that Mary likes to pick berries but “you can’t eat them.” They eat waffles for lunch.

And here at this house, we take Max to Pinky Park to build snow castles. Sam and I immediately become engrossed. Max holds his distance and observes. I saw us through his eyes: two happy idiots trying to amass dry snow that blew away or crumbled before we could build anything, yelling at the snow, directing each other to no avail—loud, messy and spirited. Right then I wished I had a banana to give him.

There are three more new entries so scroll on down.

Autumn 08 in NY

I can’t let this season pass without mentioning Election Day. Dave gets that day off and we vote at the library at the end of our street. What a great day it was. Leaves had been raked into piles all along Whitfield. Sam hopped from one pile to the other all the way home. Jen (the next door neighbor) and I raked 3 yards full for the kids. The girls next door wore their handmade McCain/Palin t-shirts. I almost said something but whatever I said would have come out of my insecurity—in this neighborhood it was hard to believe a black man could be president. But we’d all been to the booth and allowed our children to pull the levers in our respective direction. Sometimes, it’s better to do nothing more than await results together in a pile of leaves.

Winter--Party Hardy.

Winter in Buffalo comes on strong and doesn’t let up for so long, that you become as down and out as Mickey Rourke in a comeback film. It doesn’t help that Sam’s birthday coincides with the winter solstice. Third Birthday. Three Birthday Parties. The friend party (nothing like breaking birthday celebrations into categories) was held at Dog Ear’s Bookstore. It’s a literary center in the middle of South Buffalo. How could we not support that?

On top of the birthday festivities, we had a slew of homecomings: Grandma Joyce & Joe, Brette, Scott, Bethy, Aunt Ann. And then there were the many and varied Christmas celebrations. Now Sam just assumes that his uncles will bring forth gifts.

Calendar Pages--The Great Grandmas

Every year, I make a calendar for my Nana. She really likes them and uses it throughout the year to mark occasions and appointments. She's 87 and Betty is 85. When my grandmothers reached a certain age, I started doing these yearly rituals for them--planting bulbs, spring visit to the Broadway market, making calendars. The rituals are my way of saying, "stay with me for this year, for this season".

Anyone who knows me well, knows that I'm devoted to my grandmothers. I figured for Sam, a mere sprout, their age would make them irrelevant to him: They are so passed their prime and each has such little spunk left (and both in their day but very differently were spunky broads). I should have known they would not settle for irrelevance. Sam says to me regularly, "I love Nana." (and alternatively, "I hate Nana" which means "I don't want to do whatever it is you want me to do."); and, he cries whenever it is time to leave Gamma Be-y house. Nana smothers him in kisses, gives him money from her change purse and gushes whenever he shows her a new toy or a latest dance move. And Betty, she calls him her boyfriend, bickers with him and always has soup and cookies at the ready. And I know that when they are gone, Sam may or may not have specific memories of them but their lives will have marked his.