Opa Gerard Roos and his garden

Here is my grandfather with a cigar in his hand and a flower in his lapel in front of his allotment house and adjacent garden.  I can't say how much I like that my father's family were a bunch of cigar smokers.

I imagine he and my grandmother sat here on Sundays to get some sun.  Surely, he didn't garden wearing a suit?

I smoked a cigar myself once.  I was eighteen. I was working at Baker's Shoes in downtown Salt Lake and the wife of one of the salesmen had had a baby, and he gave everyone a cigar.  On Sunday morning, in the kitchen, I pulled it out in front of my young brothers and sisters and began to light up.  

My mother walked in and said in a calm voice, "If you're going to smoke that thing, take it outside."

She was too cool for school.  How could she have been so decent and calm at my absolutely inappropriate and outrageous behavior?

Because she was reading my diaries, that's why.

I did take the cigar into the backyard where I had several puffs but lost interest without the audience.

Just because Mother is dead doesn't mean I have forgiven her for reading my diaries.  Death is no excuse for bad behavior.

 You know what she said after confessing that she'd read them (long after I was married):    "I don't think I could have raised you without reading them."

Pleeeze, Louise.