Dedication

My Beautiful Mother and Brilliant Father at home in the classic setting of simple East Texas beauty that nourished my soul as a child.

My Brilliant Father gifted me genetically with an astute intelligence.  In fact, Beautiful Mother used to prod me that I just had to do something with my brain.  “Perhaps astrophysics…or the law?” she pled.  I know my engineer father is proud of me even though he may not agree with the choices of a daughter who – even though she possesses his scientist’s brain – is first a mother, and has the soul of an artist to boot.

My Beautiful Mother wanted to be a missionary before she fell in love with my father.  Her life afterwards has always exemplified the role of service to her fellow man in all that she does.  A former school principal, she is a lifelong educator and advocate for children.  She’s established day care centers for the disadvantaged and helped to house the homeless.  It was, in fact, my dilemma about whether to follow the path of a mother I adored so, or struggle to find some fuzzy undetermined path of my own, that led to so many changes of degree plan in college!

That my work and everything that I do is also dedicated to my beloved children is probably implicit given what I write and has already been stated in my posts.  And I’ll say it anyway.

Since 1986, my children have stood as an illustration in flesh and blood that I was loved immensely by a Creator who allowed me to have my only childhood dream fulfilled.  And they were living proof that I had it in me to be a good mother in spite of the hardships I endured getting them here – or since.

This kind of validation for a woman is hard to top.  Now Best Birthday Gift Ever, Elder Sun, Dazzling Daughter, and Nuclear Sun are the reasons I’m driven to share what I know.

It’s for them, and for their children, and for their children’s children that I toil.