Reasons I loved Adam this weekend (don’t worry, I haven’t gone over to the sickly romantic side, this involves farting):

• He’s reached the point where he laughs about my grandfather’s storytelling and obsessions with certain things (i.e. Some Like It Hot and My Cousin Vinny) and imitates him
• He eats my pie
• He introduces me by saying “This is my Julia”
• He’s weirdly proud of what I do…though I think he likes to tell people I’m the editor of a magazine just so he can tell them he’s been published in my magazine. Twice.
• He won’t let me eat fast food in the car, but makes me wait until we get home. Wait, I hate him for that…
• He scoots up next to me, butt on my leg, and says excitedly, “Guess what?!” and then lets out a huge fart. Right on my leg. (I do love him for that, honest to God.)

It’s the little things that make me smile. And the fart-y and laugh-together-about-Papa things that make me realize we may have slipped into a very comfortable place. How I’ve waited to be in that place!

This weekend my mom dropped off a few old photos she’d found at Papa’s house. I think I was probably five or six-ish and must have been at a birthday party.

That’s me in the blue polka-dotted dress. The girl to my left in the pink dress is my friend Alix. We probably met when we were babies. To my right is Eric. I went to school with him through high school.

There we are again.

And that’s my little brother Ian (who’s tall and not chubby anymore!), and me and Alix with Mimi, my grandmother and Papa’s wife. She died when I was in seventh grade. I miss her so much. She was this kind of intimidating, really giving lady that held our family together in a matriarch sort of a way. She kept the kitchen stocked with Milanos and Veronas, and the candy jar in the den was always full of Jelly Bellies. Wasn’t she so beautiful?