For Janet

Janet with Taylor and Jordyn, 11/12/02 (by Greg)

Today is Janet's birthday. Janet was my friend for about six months (not long enough). She is the grandmother of Taylor and Jordyn. Today she would be 57 years old. Hard to believe she's been gone for almost six years...

The first time I met Janet was at Taylor's third birthday party, but I didn't really get to know her until almost two years later, when I began taking care of Taylor while her parents worked. Janet was struggling with cancer by then, and she confessed that at first she thought I was trying to take over as "Grandma." (I was able to make her see that I was only looking for a playmate.)

Taylor was a fascinating child, and it didn't take long for her to completely win my heart. Janet was going back and forth between New York and Greensboro, juggling her own needs with those of her growing family here; her second grandchild was going to be born in a few months!

It was Taylor who first got Janet and I together...One of the things Taylor loved to do was to paint pottery, and The Mad Platter was one of our favorite hangouts. (Oh, the hours and dollars I spent watching that child paint multi-colored swatches on little animal figurines!) It was only natural that she would want Grandma to join us on one of these excursions, and that's when we discovered that we shared other passions besides Taylor...

How I treasure those times of painting and conversation, interrupted only occasionally when one of us had to stop and find another "victim" for Taylor's brush. When Janet had to return to New York for treatments, we kept our conversations going via e-mail. She would write me funny messages about projects she was working on, and her quest to find the right products. My favorite story is about how, wanting to replicate a frog from a birth announcement onto a plate that would be presented to the parents, she purchased a rubber stamp of a frog. But unlike the one on the announcement, this one had no lips. Apparently during one of her restless nighttime forays into the world of creativity, she used an exacto knife to carve lips on her stamp. She was amazed to discover her handiwork the following morning, having no recollection of her knife-wielding escapade during the night!

Once, Janet expressed frustration at not being able to find an item she wanted to paint at a pottery place in New York. She described it as being one of those places where they had the typical Catholic and Jewish religious chotchkies, but little else. I think I must have been having a late night experience myself when I read that message, because I was inspired to create this little work of art...

Pope on a Menorah by Kate, 2002

For the most part, though, my messages to Janet were journals of my time with Taylor. I told her about all of the wonderful, amazing, brilliant, funny things her little prodigy had done, and she told me that I was her lifeline. She provided me with an eager outlet for endless stories about my favorite subject...We were a match made in heaven!

Janet herself was wonderful, amazing, brilliant and funny. She was gone before our friendship had a chance to fully bloom, yet I feel like it still continues. I know she is here, just in a different way.

Happy Birthday, my friend. Thank you for all the ways you enriched my life during the short time you were in it. And thank you for entrusting your beautiful family to us. We will always be there for them -- for you-- in any way that we can...