Karen, if your family is anything like mine, until you lost your Dad, you hadn't seen a lot of loss or grief for someone. It's hard to watch it (and experience it!) I think I'd probably just call my Mom, if I were you, and ask her to your house to eat, to go out, to watch activities that the kids are involved in, etc. Let her know that it's okay to not be in the mood to do anything. Also let her know that you really WANT her to be involved in whatever your family is doing. My Mom has spent the night at my house two nights since my Dad passed away. Get this, I had to break my ankle and have surgery in order to get her to do that! LOL I kid her that having surgery is the only way she'll stay at my house overnight! LOL We live 80 miles apart and I call her everyday - usually twice a day. We've talked more by phone in the last four years than we'd ever talked in our lives. My DH and I and our kids and grandkids make it a point to at least spend part of every holiday at her house. She likes to stay home, so we go to her. I DO feel sometimes at her house, when everyone is there but Daddy, that there's the proverbial "big gray elephant" in the house that no one mentions. You know what I mean? Everybody is highly aware of the fact that he's no longer with us, but nobody wants to talk about it for fear of upsetting somebody else! Now, when it's just my Mom and me together, we cry (and laugh!) when we feel the need to. That's something else that I haven't thought to mention. Let her cry when she feels the need to cry. I guess you don't have to say a word, just be there for her. She and I both have talked about the fact that Fathers are the HEAD of most families. Then, as women, we both agree that the Mothers are the HEART of the family. Maybe you can reassure her in that way that she IS a vital, needed part. ((Karen))

The problem is always trying to find the answer to who is right and who is wrong. The "right thing to do", if what you are looking to do is improve your relationships is to stop trying to make everything so black and white. Sometimes you are right, sometimes somebody else is right. That is the nature of relationships. Unfortunately, if you can't get past all of the percieved wrongs somebody else has done to you, you will not move on and your relationship will not change. Thurman is on here seeking advice, but everytime he gets advice that he doesn't want to hear, he ignores it. If he would try to get past whatever beef he has with his SD and if he starts to see her as she truly is, he would be much better off, and so would she. It doesn't matter what she does, in Thurman's eyes, it is never right. If she did something nice for Thurman, he would view it as being underhanded and for some alternative purpose. Colleen...I agree with kkny and finedreams that anybody who wants to send a card and to whomever, it's nobody's business exept for the sender and the reciever. So, if you sent a nice card to you SD's inlaws and she blew up at you over that and only that (and nothing else), then you are right and she is wrong. However, what difference does that really make? Why dwell on that? Why not try to move forward and try to make the relationship better instead of focusing on who is right or wrong?

Dorothy, Thanks for sharing your precious memories too. I bet it was a shock to find yourselves somewhere that you couldn't grow okra! Summertime just isn't summertime without okra growing in the garden. Mary, How blessed we are to be able to look at our gardens and to somehow see in them some long-ago garden that meant so much to us. Jen, Well, all I can think of is that your old house was haunted by a non-gardener. Otherwise, I cannot imagine things not growing for you. Isn't it something how much we're influenced by plants once grown by people we love? We wrap up those precious memories and carry them inside our gardening souls, and when we get a chance, we pull them out and use our memories of those to turn a bare patch of ground, or a front porch with container plants, into a familiar planting area that tugs at our heartstrings. I confess that our home has family influences in the same way. Perhaps because my grandparents' homes were country homes when I was a child, I found myself recreating their country homes when we built our country home here. I had to have a screened porch because I always loved my grandmother's screened porch that she had at their country place when I was a very, very young child. I had to have a white picket fence, a round silver stock tank and a windmill for the same reason, though their windmill actually worked and mine is merely decorative. I had to have a barn, though theirs was a white sheep barn and ours is a red, barn-style garage. I had to have geraniums in our first years here, because she always grew geraniums there. I could go on and on, but it sort of astonishes me how well I remember certain things about that house because I think I was only about 5 or 6 years old when they moved away from the ranch to a little country town. I also didn't deliberately set out to make our country home have similar features to theirs, and yet, it happened. Do you know what I have to remind me of my grandfather's small town house where they lived after they sold the ranch? Grass burs. Common stickers. He was forever walking around the yard, yanking them out of the ground so they couldn't reseed. Now I do the same thing. That's not really a good thing, but it is what it is, and it is a family tradition of sorts that makes me chuckle. When we first moved here, we were so crazy about country living that we just had to sleep with the bedroom windows open so we could listen to all the night sounds. I especially loved to hear the mourning doves cooing early in the day as it reminded me of being at my grandparents' home and hearing the same cooing in the hours before sunrise. I even liked hearing the faraway sound of a train coming down the train tracks just like I would hear at night at their place. After the frogs started having regular conventions and croaking so loudly all night long that we couldn't sleep for all the racket, we gave up sleeping with the windows open. I still get to hear the mourning doves cooing early in the day when I first go outdoors. Strolls down memory lane are so much fun! Dawn

ROK likely refers to "Republic of Korea", a term used by South Korea's Military. However, an internet search indicates that "lim boo taek" is a Chinese phrase. Does this make sense?