Baaaaarrreee!

Elyse is sick, now and she acts so much like Grandma Monica, it is hysterical...
I told her how Grandma would call Uncle Baaarrry with her West Indian accent. I cooked rice and peas and have been enjoying the flavor and the taste of it for a week. Pure blooded Walkers are allergic to coconut, except in pie. So, I have to eat my rice and peas behind their backs as they enjoy the macaroni. The older I get the more definitive the cultural differences become between the Boddens and the Walker traditions. They are quick to identify the differences and defend my rights to be a Bodden in a decisively Walker household. Not one of my children is a West Indian and to imagine Elyse acting like Grandma, without a smidgeon of West Indian is a humorous anecdote, in itself. I have to translate what she says in her stubborn fully American way into West Indian to understand it.
It has helped me so much to imagine the reality that she is so like my Grandma and that that is why we enjoy one another's company so much. She is like my right hand and now with the 2 girls designing and sewing and knitting around. I feel like Grandma has set up a sewing shop in my house down here.

She carries a big bag with all of her sewing ecoutrements, I'm not sure why, she never hems anybody's skirts at church. I still remember the speed with which Grandma could hem a skirt. 1 2 3 and it was all hemmed up. Not me. I will stay with a hem out for weeks and think nothing of it. Elyse has a huge bodice set up in her room which she tries the clothes upon to look at it before putting it on her own body. Their designer eye and their fitful fingers are destined to put some kind of product of seams and thimbles out there one day. Until then...."Listen to the joke?...Barry? those are the stories that I tell them...