I talk to my sister almost daily on the phone. Not surprisingly, our conversations involve quite a few interruptions from the kids.

Me, phone at ear but yelling at daughter Jilly: “Don’t put your Crocs on the table!”

Jilly: “But, they are wet!“

Me: “I don’t care if they are wet. No Crocs on the table! Ewwww, they’re dirty too!”

Silence from sister on other end of line, and then I hear her say: “Ahh. . .Crocs!”

“What?” I ask her.

She: “I thought you said crotch.”

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I had barely glanced at the cover since bringing the book home from the library. The title, Grandfather’s Wrinkles, had been chosen to coincide with our week-long study of human skin. I saw “wrinkles” and thought it’d be a good choice for this week‘s topic.

And then I sat down to read the book to the girls. We settled on the couch, and I put the book in my lap. After staring at the cover for a moment, I quickly leafed through the pages and asked Belly, in a wavering voice, “who does this remind you of?” as I pointed to the illustrated grandfather.

“Opa!” she said.

And, I burst into tears. Great sobbing tears that I couldn’t hold back even though my girls were looking at me with big eyes.

Three-and-a-half years since my dad’s death, I no longer cry daily or even weekly. I may tear up when I hear Fleetwood Mac on the car stereo, or think of him when a Republican says something stupid (“Ha, Daddy!”, I think). But I don’t cry often. Mostly, I just feel an ache of longing for his presence, a wish he could see what we were all doing and could be a part of our daily lives.

But, this book slapped me in the face. Here he was: gray hair and mustache, glasses, kind eyes and smile; blue denim shirt with white t-shirt underneath, red suspenders and tan shoes. And next to him is a little girl with honey-colored hair who could have been my own Belly.

The story itself isn’t exact to his life—he didn’t have a big church wedding or a dog. But, he is there. I can feel it as I flip through the pages of the book and dry my tears.

I plan to buy the book for myself, my sister and my mom. I won’t be able to watch them go through it though. I think they’ll understand.

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Wednesday, I did something I wasn’t sure I could do. I stayed off the computer for a day (almost). Other than a quick first-thing-in-the-morning check of my mail, there was (almost) no:

reading my Yahoo! email,
checking for Inbox mail (which handles my blog mail),
reading blogs,
Twittering,
searching for the reason why my mountain laurels look like crap,
looking up a word on dictionary.com (I used a real printed dictionary from our bookcase),
shopping for my sister’s birthday gift or Father’s Day gift,
grabbing a recipe
finding out the weather (had to turn on the radio).

Given that we were home until about 4pm, this is quite a feat for me. I don’t spend all day with my nose in a laptop, but I have a hard time walking by one of our two computers (upstairs and downstairs) without checking my mail or looking up something (which inevitably turns into ‘looking up something else’).

Let’s see if this becomes a weekly thing, or if I can cut back gradually in general.

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In other news, my sister-in-law arrives today from Florida, and we are all terribly excited to see her. Her visit was planned ages ago, when we thought she’d be planning her September wedding, not dealing with this. If anyone needs some inspiration, come by and see how strong the human spirit is in dealing with life-altering events.

Oh, and she is bringing her wii, so I may be out of commission for a few days. Tennis, anyone?

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