A picture of contentment

Found!  A photo of young Laura in an oceanfront Cape May restaurant.  Happy, focused, pleased... with that touch of a smile...a picture of contentment.  How the seaside light plays on her hair and reaches across our cozy table setting.  You can enter into this space and take a little piece of this peace for yourself, if you click on the photo and get the larger view.

Laura would have been 16 on October 27.  

What the heart has once known, it shall never forget. ~Author unknown

Summer scramblings remembered: Acadia

Porcupine Islands and schooner Margaret Todd

The scene on Cadillac Mt

"...and the tourists were held back, while President Obama and his family walked around the top of Cadillac Mountain."   Maybe you heard something like that recently in the news and saw a photo of the first family as they took in the sweeping view from this must see spot in Acadia National Park in Maine.   Immediately, it sent me back to that August evening in 2003 when all of us, with dogs, joined other milling tourists on the wide Mt. Cadillac summit.  Children hopped about the gently bumpy summit slabs,  photographers poised their cameras, people chatted and struck up new acquaintances; all awaiting the sunset in this Acadia National Park tourist ritual.  Photos taken that evening that once seemed so ordinary, and quickly thumbed through, now invited closer examination and provided an acute window into memory.  To get the flavor, just click on any one of these photos for a closer look.

Laura's "Wet Village" rediscovered

I've been waiting for the chill of a damp night like this to share the recently found photos of Laura and Susan in a rainy Williamsburg many years ago .   It was pouring that April day but we persisted in walking about the village.  Soon the girls were getting chilled, Laura especially.  It was into the King's Arms tavern that we gratefully made our way.  Soon Laura was out of her wet raincoat (too thin for the weather I wince to think of) and wrapped in a thick adult jacket. The two girls made a bee-line to warm-up at  the fireplace.  Lunch perked everyone up and Susan really enjoyed her tomato soup (still one of her staples to this day!)

Three years today

Laura Stiles   October 27, 1994  -  December 22, 2006

Beloved daughter, sister, niece, and friend: the tears will never cease, that you had to leave us.

Please visit Laura's caringbridge site which has been updated by clicking here.

A rainy day Lemonade Stand

I was pleased to do a fall-themed Alex's Lemonade Stand at Supercuts in Boonton yesterday.  Thanks so much to my helpers:  Claire, Peter A, Carmen, Alec, Mallory and special thanks to Sara who helped so much with publicity activities as well as setting up the stand.  It was a rainy day (raining all over the Northeast) but we still raised a nice sum and got to chat with a number of old as well as new friends who stopped by.

A fall-themed Alex's Lemonade Stand

I think Laura would have liked the paper  this flyer is printed on.  The paper is called "Acorn Alley" and I think it has that little touch of whimsy so like what Laura incorporated into her drawings.  (If you haven't gotten here from the caringbridge site, please also see http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/laurastiles and our online page for the stand at http://www.alexslemonade.org/stands/19402)
Local residents, you can see the flyer in places like the Plaza Restaurant in Del's Village; A&P; Metro Pet- and more (when I get there...)

If you would like to have a closer view of the flyer, just click on it.

National Park reprise

I don't know if anyone caught any of  the 6-segment Ken Burns National Park special that ran on public television this past week (Ch 13 here in NY metro area).  To be honest, you would probably have to be a pretty die-hard  fan of the National Park system as I am to want to delve into this much of the politics and history of the Parks.  But with its scenes (among others) of Bryce, Zion, Arches, Grand Canyon and Petrified Forest, the show brought such a flood of memories of our family visit to these western National Parks  in Aug/Sept 2001 when Laura was almost 7.  Emotions too: happy that she got to see and experience much of America's "Empire of Grandeur" in her short life but sadness that there would be no more trips there for her.  Mixed in, the thought that the lives of many children with cancer are cut so very short that they never have any chance at all to see such wonder.  After the show one night, I summoned up the courage to sit at Laura's desk among her  figurines, books and treasured belongings, still arranged as she had so neatly placed them, and opened up her National Park passport book.  Her gentle life force still seems to hum about the desk. In that strong field of emotion, I can only stay a while.
But I did look at the dated stamps of each park in her book like "Capitol Reef Nat'l Park Sept 2, 2001" and "Bryce Canyon Sept 3, 2001" etc and travel back in time, and for short while, we were together again, walking and skipping along pine-scented paths, pushing open doors into visitor centers, delighting in flipping the switch to the gas fireplace in our charming newly renovated cabin in Zion, driving through miles of ever unfolding splendid scenery, walking under arches and marvelling at vistas...