almost finished with the book, and pulling together pictures to put in it (see below). At the end of elizabeth mansfield irving's life, she accepted an offer from her son, who had left toledo much earlier, and gone out to pasadena california to run the mira monte hotel (below). it appears to me that his uncle, her brother, used his money to fix up old places in pasadena knowing that there was a steady market for tourists arriving in pasadena and needing places to stay indefinitely. the weather was warm, there was access to all of the la area, there was good social life outside and in their fancy ballroom-type main room, and there were good times all around. to her, a steady supply of bridge partners and not having to drive icy streets to get to them was definitely an attraction.

they had apparently bought this old mansion - not downtown, but set back a ways - and fixed it up to be a fine hotel, and her son now ran it - not a bad job, just making sure there were plenty of sheets, towels, silverware, plates - I'm not sure if they provided meals or not, but in any case one had to be on the grounds at all times, so they made sure that wasn't a bad option. when she got there, of course they got her her own room, and that was where she spent the last ten years of her life. traveling was not hard, though i'm not sure they flew all that much those days - this was the depression, in the thirties, and she had enough to go back east once in a while, to see her daughter and her sister - but in general money was tight, especially in toledo where she'd spent almost fifty years - and now she was in her eighties, and didn't get around as easily.

her son had a single daughter who grew up, apparently, in this same hotel, so she was able to spend her sunset years presumably around this granddaughter.

i think of this sometimes as we are way too far away to visit our grandchildren, but may do something about that before too long. much as we love new mexico, in some ways it has become impractical, especially the part about driving steep mountain cliffs in icy snowy weather. the situation has come up now where it might be best for us to deal with this particular problem so that as we get to the end game, we are a little closer to our loved ones ourselves.

some of our children of course don't especially want to hear about that. in the big picture, they're somewhat tired of moving all the time.