March, like any month in a big family, is full of mundane days and days of great significance and some that are both, especially when you're a middle age mom with kids from Kindergarten to full-fledged adults and the fleetingness of it all catches up to you. We got more than a couple visits with Rosie, got to celebrate Easter with all the kids in one place for a brief moment, see one of my online bestie's kids, visit/pray for Cecilia and our friends, the Ekblads, watch the FGR girls basketball team make history by going to the state championship and more!
Isabel came for Easter Break and got to cuddle her sweet niece!
Below are Sean, Jacob and Nino. Three AMAZING guys
(no pun intended, that's their ministry...telling people they are AMAZING!!!)
This was the FGR Girl's Basketball first close/tough game of an amazing season. They played Tecumseh in Districts (I think? Maybe Regionals? IDK lol) at Ypsi Lincoln HS.
The girls celebrating their nail biting win over Tecumseh above and a true buzzer beater below to go to the State Championship game at Breslin - I couldn't attend in person but I bought a pass to watch it on TV and wow! WHAT A SHOT!!!
My boss, Donna, and I both won awards!
Paulina got to be Veronica in the 4th Grade Passion Play - all the kids did such a good job!
When I was young I loved Good Friday. For years and years we would travel to meet my mom's side of the family and we would go to a little stone church, Saint Edward in Mendon, MI for the Good Friday service. Very often it was ALL of us. Which meant my gma/gpa and their five kids, spouses and the 15 grand-kids they produced through those five marriages...27 people in a little matchbook church (with their regular faithful I assume but we took up a lot of room!).
After that we’d all drive to the little town of Colon, MI (Magic capital of the world TYVM) and go out for our Good Friday fried fish meal at the same restaurant, which changed names a few times, but we always referred to as the Magic Carpet. Fried fish and french fries and 14 siblings and cousins to goof around with. Parents getting drunk on pitchers of beer and later doing shots of schnapps (Peach, Peppermint...take your pick folks!) It was hardly a mournful, sorrowful, pious day of remembrance, yet it remains one of my cherished memories from childhood. I LOVED IT and I love my family for making it happen for so many years.
There's a saying that "the prayers of your grandmother are still protecting you" that keeps coming to mind this Good Friday. There's no doubt my mom's mom is where I get my all-in Catholic faith. One of my earliest memories of my maternal grandma, Gladys Losinski, is being at her house and getting up really early one morning (or late one night?) probably to pee and finding her on her knees in the living room praying a Rosary. I don't remember anything else. I didn't know what she was doing. I don't think we talked. But I vividly remembering seeing it and I can see everything in the scene right now in my mind's eye. The armchair she was kneeling at, the beads in her hands, her whispered prayers in between the kitchen and the main room of the house. The bedroom where my parents slept when we stayed on one side and the door to the upstairs and my grandparents room on the other. It's a wonderful memory that I cherish years and decades later since l now know what a Rosary is and how unassuming my grandma was. She didn't make any show of it but she clearly prayed her butt off for all her kids and grandkids and I know for sure those prayers have sustained and protected me and how likely it is that she is still sustaining and protecting me (and my kids and grandkid!) with her prayers today!
Today I love Good Friday for less superficial reasons. While I don't usually attend a liturgy anymore, if I can I always make a pilgrimage as I did in my childhood. I prefer to go to the outdoor stations at the Saint Joseph's Shrine, Irish Hills where Father Zach Mabee is now pastor and walk the Via Dolorosa singing Stabat Mater with a group of otherwise strangers. Then I try to visit the grave of my maternal grandparents. Today when we rolled up to the cemetery there was a single sheep (white as snow while not quite a lamb) and a single donkey. Man, I love me a little Godwink symbolism ~ thanks Jesus!
I also try to make a visit to my other grandma, now three months away from 99 years old and hanging in there. Lu and I tried to bring a little Jesus to her today, even though she's not a believer per se. She's agnostic and she talks about God but she doesn't think He needed to send His son to die for anyone. She's never quite been able to wrap her head around that one. Today was a great visit, while we woke her up she remembered me pretty quickly and there were no tears when we left (sorry dad and Uncle D we didn’t read or send an email!) Of course she let Lu have a bingo prize and Lu left her a drawing and I shared some of the third hand flowers (my friend JZ had bought for them for an employee of hers but when I won an award she gave them to me and I enjoyed them all week and divied up the remains for both my grandmas) 
Today on the way home since it was so beautiful and I wasn’t sick of driving (it’s 4 hours minimum round trip), Lu and I also stopped by the little stone church in Mendon for old times sake and while I had hoped to buy a shot of schnapps to toast the fam, unfortunately we found Clancy's (ye old Magic Carpet) totally abandon so that didn’t pan out.
Still, it was a GOOD Friday indeed.
Easter Sunday at Grandma Paula's!
Isabel went on Spring Break with Noah's family. They had a great time at the beach.
Gary Evans Memorial at EMU. He was just the best!
If you were blessed and lucky enough to know him than you know how blessed and lucky you were in this life.
I was privileged to work for this man (and Gail Compton) for 3 out of my 4 years of undergrad and my entire 1.5 years in graduate school at EMU Communication, Media and Theatre Arts (CMTA). And then again to work with him for another few years when I ran the TC programs for Eastern Michigan University. I shared an office with he and Katie and it was the most warm and wonderful 'home away from home' a girl could ask for. I spent almost as much time there as my own dorm room. It was like having my own on-campus dad(s).
Our 'relationship' has been nothing but a Christmas card exchange over the last two decades and you'd think that might make me sad now that I realize he's gone from this world, but I can't say that it makes me sadder in any profound way. Because once Gary Doc Evans had influenced you, there was no shaking him out of your soul. His impact was apart of you and you were a better person for it. Period. It's hard to explain but he was such a good person, who he was just became a part of who you are if you spent any amount of time with him. I didn't 'miss' him for those 25-some years because who he was had just become part of who I am in this world so he was always there. Every day I still remember things he taught me, things he said, wisdom he shared, kindness he carried, his joy, his passion, his light, his love. And all that is just part of who I am, as a person, as a parent, as a mother, as a friend, and as an EMU employee.
I watched Gary help, counsel, teach and love on countless students day after day in that little office in 124 Quirk (now Judy Sturgis-Hill TYVM) and any day I get to help someone at EMU just feels like an extension of that...like a privilege and an honor that I am somehow lucky enough to get to continue his legacy here. Being kind when I can. Helping when an opportunity presents itself. Just ordinary, everyday acts of kindness, nothing heroic or fantastic or distinguished. Just smiling, laughing, crying, empathizing and HELPING. That's how I'll most remember Gary. As a helper. Like my own personal Mr. Rogers, the college version. LOL
I love you Gary. I do miss you and I *have* missed you 'lo these countless years but at your passing, knowing how you lived your life to it's fullest and gave all the love you had to give every day that there was love to give in this world - well, it's impossible to be anything but grateful and so, so happy that God in His providence allowed our universes to unite for 4+ wonderful years in the most formative time of my life.
"There are big ships and small ships but the best ship of all is Friendship" - from the cover of the last card Gary sent me (outside of a Christmas card) in September 2017.
RIP my friend. You make my life better every day. Always have and always will.
Cecilia gets her head shaved!
Is any trip complete without a stop at Buccee's?