ROBIN

Ginny with crayons and paper.

Here's a portrait of my daughter Kimberly Robin  drawn by her daughter, my granddaughter, Virginia Mae.  Ginny was five when she drew this picture on her mother's birthday.  See the three tiered cake in the lower right hand corner with the candle on top.  When Ginny was very young Robin sat with her at the dining room table with crayons and paper and they would draw layer cakes and decorate each layer.  I love the balloons and the sun shinning from behind her head making my daughter look like a Madonna.  Ginny drew pink cheeks, clear blue eyes, and a sweet smile.  It fills my heart with so much love.  Ginny will be nine this summer and she makes me laugh.

Robin's last pair of Buster Browns..bronzed. 2nd grade.

Robin could really put a spin on words and phrases.  How about "Frunky Fried Chicken" for Kentucky Fried and "Fweeping Booly" for Sleeping Beauty  (3-5 years old) and "two neeks wotice" when she was much older.

When Robin was a little girl she was very flexible and was forever running ahead of me and doing cartwheels and round offs.  One time my BFF Tommie Centeno babysat for me and when I got off work Tommie and her kids and Mary Carlson and her son and me and Robin went to a restaurant in the Mission District in San Francisco for dinner.  The restaurant was long and narrow with tables down each side of a center aisle which I think Robin found a little too enticing.  I looked around and caught her after the first cart wheel.  Believe me, she was normally very well behaved.

We moved back to Virginia when Robin was eleven and she went to the sixth grade at Fairview Elementary School.  She was the third generation to go to Fairview.  Mom had gone there when it was a one room school house with a vestibule and  a wood stove for heat.  This was during the depression and the parents got together and donated vegetables and the stuff to make a big pot of soup on the stove.  I went to Fairview when it was a brick school house with multiple classrooms and a beautiful full stage and my Aunt, a licensed dietitian, ran the cafeteria.  My being the first year of the baby boom they closed off the auditorium in fifth grade to make a much needed classroom.  By the time Robin got there they had restored the auditorium for use but they had opened walls between classrooms. The first time the bell went off signaling a fire drill Robin dropped under her desk because she was used to doing earthquake drills this way in California schools.

First dance class at Schmacher's third grade. 

She went to Robinson High School and was an average student, happy and healthy with wonderful friends.  The spring of her sophomore year she needed to fill out her schedule for the next year and looking over the courses offered we found Accounting.  I had read somewhere that that was one field where there was no difference in the salaries of men and women and suggested she take it junior year.  She did and fell in love with it and continued from Robinson to Northern Virginia Community College.

 From third grade all the way through high school Robin took dance classes.  At Showcase Dance Studio in Manassas VA under the direction of Carol Haute Gil Montero Robin took tap, jazz, ballet, and toe.  She was in the performing dance company there and continued dance at Northern Virginia Community College and choreographed several shows while there.

Robin married Rick nine years ago and they've given me two beautiful granddaughters.  He's the best son-in-law in the world and I love him very much.

Rick at Ocean City.

Evie about three with her baby.

Geneva Lorraine, Evie, is six years old now and about ready to graduate from kindergarten.  She's smart as a whip and absolutely fearless.  I can vouch for this because last year I watched her at a water park in Arlington slide down the water slides from 100 times higher than her height while all the other kids splashed under the  sprinklers.

 I wish we lived closer to each other so I could bug my daughter more often.  Thank goodness I'm retired United Airlines and can fly from California to Virginia.  I'll use those passes as often as I can.

ROBIN AT HER DESK IN HER KITCHEN

                                                               I LOVE YOU, KID!
                                                               Happy Mother's Day