...additionally, while at my parents' house, I discovered letters my aunt--my dad's sister--has been sending us. For some reason dad seems to delay opening them, as if he wants some sort of separate space from her. I wrote down her new mailing addy--the old one is useless, as she moved some time ago--because I want to write to her. I need to know the women in my family--the good ones--before they pass away. So far I've only known my maternal grandmother, and she was an unpleasant woman--although she loved us, she was very angry all the time. So I think I'd like to drive up the coast to visit my Aunt Joellen. She runs a restaurant in the little NorCal fishing town of Trinidad (decidedly different from the other Trinidad, by the way), and is twice divorced. A single woman living her own life.

I like her already, and the last time we met I was maybe six, and all I remember is the fields of blackberries in the meadow in front of her small clapboard house, and how impossibly beautiful the fuschias were that hung on her porch.