It’s hard to believe that two years ago, right now, I was visiting Nano, for the last time and I didn’t know it.  
She wasn’t feeling so well.  As a matter of fact she was feeling terrible and I was thankful to be there, to push her around, quite literally and to make her smile with memories of our past antics.

I had no idea when I was knee high, that my strict, determined mama and I would actually one day be travel buddies. Oh we didn’t go far. Trips to the cottage and visits with old friends and a few stays in some beautiful hotels and lots of delicious food.
She’s gone, but boy have I got some happy memories. Those four weeks in the fall of 2015 were likely the hardest ones I’ve lived, but they were also the best. Family and tears and hugs and whispers and hand holding and
Loving
each other
and her. It was the end of our times together and I feel sad about it but it’s onward for us, upward for her. It’s Jesus and Nano and Papa and so many others
together
and I’m going to see them again.

I suppose this is my life from here to then. Every fall, The mess of Putting Up and canning and picking and cooking will always and forever remind me of days long gone. The preachers wife doing what needed doing so we could eat fruit and vegetables all winter.
A warm kitchen and a set table and jars of peaches and plums and cherries and apple pies and
I’m not kidding
it
always
smelled
so good in Nano’s kitchen.

Do you remember, Jan, the time you came to visit when I was there to visit, at that mint green condo? It was literally the crack of dawn and Nano was still driving that little silver car then. I woke up, early, to smell something baking and wondered
what in the World
and I called to her from that little bed in that little room and she said she was making
muffins for breakfast but she needed to do a wee errand before we ate them.
I thought nothing of it and turned over under that pink quilt that you had used at Bible College and she still had it and I slept under it when I went.
Just a few minutes later the door opened and in she walked, with you right behind. She had picked you up at the little airport down the street and over a couple of roads near the blueberry farms.
You had come to see us and we ate muffins, warm, and Nano had her apron on and it was fun
and crazy but such a good idea.

I cannot eat a muffin without thinking of her. Just the other day I was telling someone that Nano would not eat a muffin if it couldn’t first be heated. In a cafe or at an airport or on the road, muffins needed to be warm and better still, have a dab of butter.
You know, I’m the same now.
“Is it possible to have this heated up”? I ask. Sometimes the answer is “no” and sometimes the server looks at me strange but
it never hurts to ask as long as you ask nicely!

I made muffins this week. They are so good. Nano would love them and I would love to share them with her. I would of course heat hers first and add some butter and there would be tea involved and likely an apron or two.

There is a new stock of aprons on the  apron market (everyday link) and you really should try the zucchini breakfast muffins.