the rip roaring read-o-rama OR why I love my cousins

the rip roaring read-o-rama
OR why I love my cousins
Originally uploaded by suttonhoo.

'Cause who else can you close down a restaurant with on a Wednesday night in Napa (keeping in mind this is Napa, so the restaurants close early. WAY too early.) while trying to puzzle out the riddle that is your mothers, each other's sisters, if not with a couple of gorgeous cousins and a cousin-in-commonlaw who tells the sweet story of their meeting and subsequent re-meeting on the following day on which he "had already arranged to meet with this really pretty bald girl".

And laughing. And eating too much. And drinking way too much wine.

And learning about how your cousin, an elementary school teacher, arranged a classroom event that has evolved now three years later into a school wide thing in which the kids spend the whole day READING. ANYTHING they want. In their PAJAMAS.

And guest readers come in -- writers who read their stuff and make writing real for kids; who make earning a living at writing real.

In their pajamas. Did I mention the pajamas?

Your cousin. Lighting fires in kids in the schoolwide Rip Roaring Read-O-Rama, your cousin the little girl you remember chasing down those bubbles and popping them in the sunshine.

Laughing like we're not nearly as old as we're all growing, too fast, and knowing that, if growing old means having more stories to share like these, tonight, with this good kin, then old is going to be a good place to be.