Thoughts on Rozel Hello Everyone, This is the time when we try to reduce a life to words. No pressure. - - - - - Many words come to mind when I think of Rozel. She was an appreciator and booster. A lifelong friend to so many. Hard working. Determined. Warm. And very strong. - - - - - But words barely highlight some aspects of Mom. Fifty years of bread making?! Call it 15,000 loaves, give or take a currant bread. A gift to make a Rockefeller proud. Laundry loads for seven, with a ringer washer and no dryer. Except Mother Nature...conveniently located upstairs. We used wooden clothes pegs to hold the clothes, on dual clotheslines that were each double the usual length. Today those pegs would be plastic, but wooden ones had some advantages. For example, if you wanted to impart a realistic rust color to your clothes. Of if you actually enjoyed the challenge of making one working clothes peg from two broken ones. Then there were the birds landing on those clothes lines. Drawn by the homemade feeder that once housed 17 Grossbeaks at once.   Everything about our upbringing was unique. A unique house, with a stairwell, in a closet, that allowed you to walk up...to the ceiling. A unique yard, with half a dozen gardens, half a dozen small strips of grass, and half a dozen dogwoods. Or was that maples? Our cars were true people carriers. Our trailer an omni carrier -- manure and camping supplies conveyed with equal status. But joining it all together was Mom and Dad. - - - - - Today everyone wants a life. To be shared on Facebook. Mom and Dad just wanted our lives. To survive and thrive. Different priorities, that brought different results. Today us youngins are as proudly different from more typical folk as we were thirty, forty and fifty years ago.   "Family first" was the unspoken motto that glued us together. - - - - - Maleena got a chance to meet family last year. The timing turned out to be perfect. Mom knew it was time to go this year. Her timing was of course impeccable. Then we were given 90 days to move out...   Yet everything came together in such a remarkable way.   We somehow attracted the perfect house. That had been repeatedly passed over by others. Its price tag twice declined, in six months of offering. While all around prices spiralled ever higher. We made a single offer. And it was accepted. Others routinely made ten and got nothing. We offered to pay half of closing costs, and yet found rebates, credits and mana from heaven enough to cover it all. With $37 left over. Even the banker was left just slowly shaking his head. Took him at least a minute to mouth the words "thirty" and "seven".   Imagine how happy Rozel and John would have been.   Roethe, our new home, is as perfectly in harmony with the lives they lived as it is perfect for the lives Maleena, the young men and I hope to live.   Caring is the single most important thing in life. The only antidote for a world at war. For these selfish times.   With caring, anything is possible.   Thank you, Rozel and John, for caring.   - Floyd, Maleena, Onyx, Evan, Ellca, Neutrino and Ralphe. [The sixty foot American Sycamore in our backyard.]