Divide and conquer: kid tactics

Equal time for Lisa

The fun part for me is recognizing all my studio equipment and Lisa's old furniture in these pages.
Katie grew up to inherit that room after Lisa moved out. Now Katie's moving out of it. And repainting the red ceiling back to white.

Reading these reminds me that 6 is one of my favorite ages

 The downside of having Charlie do the dishes while I did less visible house cleaning, like the bathrooms.

01-30-1993 was a prolific day for cartoons

I, um, never got much further than that first group of vehicles and Joeys.
Sigh. Joey's very forgiving of my foibles, even if I am not.
(The room has long since been painted over. It's Emily's now)

I don't remember what the "shark tooth" was. I think it was a rock.
Joe's almost 25 now. Maybe he still remembers the tooth...

I was looking for an answer such as,
"Heyyy, you're right! It didn't eat me because I'm stronger than it is!"
All those years of developmental psychology classes, wasted...

Working at home

Katie's turquoise-colored fweeping bag was a gift from Grandma Joan, and she carried it *everywhere*.
It was her Linus blankie. Oversize, thick, hard to accommodate (and smelly and in need of a good washing, more often than it got one) -- and three-year-old Katie loved it.

11-17-1992 was a prolific day for cartoons

This is Joey, age 6 1/2, and Lisa, 9, also on Nov. 17, 1992.

Katie was born when I was one month shy of my 30th birthday.
Pretty sure I had wrinkles.

(I think she meant beautiful, not scary)

Letters to Grandpa, 1989 - 1993

It all started when my mom suggested I send periodic notes to my grandpa and grandma. At first it was Grandpa who was ailing, so the notes were meant to cheer him up.

Grandpa scared me a little when I was a kid. He was a little gruff. His humor was tongue-in-cheek, wry, the twinkle-in-your-eye sort. He was an imposing figure, a self-made man. Very wealthy, lots of kids, tons of grandkids. It was easy for me to get lost in the shuffle, I thought.

But he let me play his very fancy pipe organ when I was a teen, and that's something most of the grandkids weren't allowed to even touch.

He and my grandma encouraged creativity. They were the earliest supporters of my work, that I can remember.

They traveled all over the world, and their house was filled with treasures from fantastical lands. Grandpa George and Grandma Ruth hosted the most amazing parties -- I got to know my cousins so well they were more like siblings than cousins.

They gave so much to our families that sending notes seemed like a very simple way to give back. And I lived 90 minutes away -- too far to visit often, especially with little kids.

So I sent notes, cartoons of my kids. The cartoons were always, always true to life. Not one thing made up, not one word changed.

I didn't know at the time how much my notes would bring us together. When Grandma Ruth fell into the awful claws of dementia, I sent notes more frequently, to boost Grandpa. When Grandpa died, he was my best friend.

It took years before I could sift through the cartoons without crying. He had saved every single one, and upon his death his kids, my aunts and uncles, gave me a huge box filled to the top.

Eventually my kids catalogued the notes for me, laughing over each one.

I always thought it'd be neat to share the cartoons somehow, as a tribute to a great couple, a great friendship, and some of the funniest little kids who have ever walked this earth. This is that "somehow."

I won't redraw them.

Some are awkwardly drawn, some have many pages taped together for a sequential comic. Some are in color (yay!). Most are simply black ink on paper, scrawled quickly while on break at work or just before dashing out the door to pick up kids or drop off kids or do some other hectic thing.

They don't start in order on this blog, but eventually they might become a chronological effort.

This first cartoon is one of my favorites, one which I quote often.

Katie is now 21; these were drawn in 1992 on November 17.

Here we go: