Do visit Lady Lydia if you haven’t been there in a while. She too is musing about ‘the changes’ and how they affected her family. She tells the story of her Grandmother’s diary entries and photographs and says there were times people would say:

“Don’t you want to make a lot of money and do better than your parents?” I think it is very hard to do better than parents who had a lasting marriage and raised children and kept a home place. We always hope the younger generation will make a better pie, though…”

Of course these aren’t the only aspirations they had for their progeny. Better time management, better health, and more sincere spiritual walks made the list too. I just had to smile at the pie is all. That was in fact a sincere hope for my Grandmother’s relatives. As she used to say, “We were a pie-eating family.” Meaning, we don’t do cake.

Anyway, it is sweet and sad and you want to read it all.