In 1949, with the war years well behind us, my mother decided it was time to spruce up the interior of our Upper Peninsula home. My father suggested that knotty pine would be nice, but Mom had other ideas.

“These rooms need a little magic,” Mom said. “I’m really tired of all this mauve. What we need is something new—something exciting, elegant, enchanting.”

“We could use a change,” I agreed, trying to be helpful.

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When my friend Phyllis retired from a twenty-one year career in Financial Operations at the University of Michigan, she didn’t wonder for a second how she would spend her days. Her dreams of being a full-time grandmother would finally be fulfilled. That she would also have time to redecorate the house and knit to her heart’s content was wonderful, but the time she would spend making memories with her four year-old granddaughter, Alexandra, would be the most important.

Phyl’s husband Jack retired shortly after she did and, while that could have presented a territorial problem for some couples, these two struck a silent agreement to stick to their own areas of business—she to the house and he to the garden…most of the time…

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