Libby.  The name evokes mischief.  She lives up to it too.  Her ex told her more times than a plenty “Everything’s not funny, Libby”!  But to her all things are funny.  I can attest to her emotional range, but she can find something funny in everything.  Including me walking into a closed bedroom door in the dark or a funeral.

Libby is a bright spirited creature with a smile that can make you scramble for sunglasses while in her presence.  Her beautiful bright eyes.  Her beautiful smile radiates causing you to smile no matter how glum you may be.  The Bible says not to hide your candle under a bushel.   She can’t.  It burned the bushel basket a long time ago.

She’s vibrant, loves to dance to music when alone by her self and sing along.  She knows the words to so many songs.  She loves to taste the finest of life yet can live with frying fat back and cooking up grits.  Our dining room contains a good variety of wines as well.

She’s been to Broadway plays, Las Vegas and the Redwood Forest.  She loves family.  She loves her daughter and son like no other mother could.  She loves her brothers and sisters, cousins, nieces and nephews with all her heart.  She love unconditionally.  I’m first hand recipient of that love as well.  It’s overwhelming to me.  I’ve never experienced such a person in my entire life.

She is inquisitive.  She’s always looking for the truth in a matter.  Tell her something she’s not familiar with and the next day she’ll come back and tell you all about it.  In that time between she has spent whatever time it takes to fully grasp what she heard.  I told her one time that Corvette owners don’t drive their cars in the rain unless absolutely necessary.  She didn’t think that I was serious, but the next day or so she comes back to me saying she now understands what I was saying.  She’d been on the internet researching just this subject to her satisfaction. 

She bright, intelligent beyond the norm.  She’s talented to an extreme.  She can bring dreams to reality.  I’ve seen her take and idea and actually make it happen when others would dismiss it as too hard or could not fathom the actuality of it.  Take today for instance.  She’s been on this for a while, but her grandson is two this week.  The birthday party is tomorrow.  She has been gathering information and material and baking goods for a couple of weeks now.  Really she started last night.  She’s baked two cakes in the shape of a pirate ship.  Two entirely different flavors.  She put glaze on them.  This morning she continued her quest to make cupcakes in chocolate and she whipped up her own icing.  She has one of the really old Hamilton Beach mixers.  Her mom worked for them back decades ago.  She ices the cupcakes and sprinkled blue sprinkles around the outside edges and some ground up Sandie cookies and sprinkled them in the top or middle of the cupcake.  She got a package in the mail today and had also bought some backup palm trees.  She put the palm trees on these “cupcake islands” with a pirate flag on each one.  The pirate ship cakes will have one of them decorated with skeletons onboard as though it were a ghost ship.  She’ll put rigging on them and all so by tomorrow she’ll be saying Aarrrrrgh!  Me matey’s.  They be Pirate ships sailin’ for the islands!  I was sent to the store for more food coloring for something I have no idea what for, but as I was leaving she was figuring out how to make an octopus cookie in green.  This illustrates her talent for baking, but it’s just one of her many abilities.

My old home is a mansion now, to me.  I can’t describe how much more livable it is.  It has a whole new look.  What was water stained walls from hurricanes past are now wallpapered and painted in colors from the palate of her mind.  Such vibrant shades of life that make the heart feel like nowhere else but home.  We have made this our home.  It’s beautiful.

She’s beautiful, stunning and no other can touch her.  She has my heart and I don’t want it back.