This was a strange little weekend– and one I knew would offer a chance to reset.

Yesterday Gayle, Joan, Eva and I attended the spaghetti dinner hosted by the Stewartsville Historical Society, which brought the living veterans from the Hometown Heroes book we assembled this year into the VFW to sign their pages. How cool is that? On top of having books signed by the servicemen and woman on the pages, it was a super nice spaghetti dinner with a fantastic salad. And someone made these amazing coconut macaroons.

It was nice to see how the book project we helped make a reality translated into something meaningful for the community– preserving past and building something for the future.

Last night, I slept surprisingly well and got up and did about 11 Amazon product reviews. Today was finally the day of two big events in the Angel-and-Nan-o-sphere. (1) We were visiting someone I know who moved into Nan’s old apartment building and (2) We were making our second attempt at the annual Wawa Gobbler bowls.

A young gay couple I know– S&B– moved into Nan’s old apartment building about three blocks from my house. The management company was slowly gutting and remodeling all the apartments, and since Nan had lived there for 20 years hers was still an “old one.” When I heard S was getting his first apartment with his fiancé, and discovered it was not only in my neighborhood but in Nan’s old building, I asked her if she had any words of wisdom. Soon thereafter, she asked if she could see S’s apartment because she’d never seen what they did with them when they remodeled them. S agreed, and started to plan a dinner party, but we quickly stopped him. I reminded him that we were talking about an old blind lady who wanted to feel up his kitchen cabinets.

Today she finally got to fondle S’s closet doors, floors, and hardware. She had a grand time touching things you and I would never touch in someone else’s apartment.

Funniest part was as soon as she hit the building, muscle memory kicked in and she knew her way around. She remembered the different stair counts, and the halls, and ran around his apartment with the confidence she had in her own. I don’t think people are ever prepared for a free-wheeling blind person.

We brought ladybug magnets for luck, which I wrapped in some very strange wrapping paper, and S told us about the dragonfly that supervised their homecoming…

Afterward, we went to Wawa for our Gobbler bowls.

We ate our lunch in the garage, as the table in our outdoor seating area was cleaner and more accessible than any surface in our house. Nan was skeptical at first. She’s heard about our garage but never had reason to tour it. And like all our friends, she expressed significant surprise when she found out exactly how big our garage is. Even when we tell people we have a multi-story, split-level garage, it never quite sinks in.

Nan and I had a discussion on the way home about how cool it was that not only did she see what her old apartment might look like today, but it was a really neat cross-generational experience where she had left her last apartment to move into senior living and now we got to give the space to a young couple starting out. And not only that, but from a marginalized voices perspective: Nan was an old, independent, blind woman and she got to share her memories with a young gay couple.