Ed & Tom started out at the Corning Preserve in a canoe. After about an hour, we stopped and had a lunch of roast chicken made by Ed's mom. We continued on our way, and saw 2 girls walking along the shoreline. Ed shouted out, "How far to Manhattan?" They ignored us. A half hour later we abandoned the idea of Manhattan and found a little bar. After a few cool ones, we called Idy to come pick us up. 

Tom Vanderhoof

After my parents divorced, my dad shifted his life, his love, his heart. He committed to working through the childhood trauma that he had held in for so long. The abuse, the alcoholism, his fathers suicide. So much for him to hold and to protect us from. The divorce was hard, but at some point he took it as an opportunity to nurture the two beings who had come out of their love: myself and my little brother Eric. Eric and my dad had a “father and son” bond, but with an 8 year old daughter, it was different. My dad must have anticipated how that could get challenging with teen years on the horizon, and so he worked hard to bond in ways that kept the future in mind. He created rituals and routines, traditions that we continued up until the month before he died.

The one that I’m reminded of daily is our butterfly book. He found this lovely Japanese book, “A Flight of Butterflies,” made as a replica of one from 1904 in the Met museum, with woodblocked art of butterflies on one side and blank pages on the other-and the book opened up in accordion style. He decided we would be pen pals, and we would take turn writing in it and then handing it off to the other for their reply.The first entries were fun and light, but it quickly turned to deeper topics around divorce and love.A year might pass before we would write again, but it always happened. He eventually began typing letters and stapling them inside the book. One I recall that he read at my wedding, “On the Occasion of Your Wedding, …..”

When I was pregnant with his only grandchild he again wrote a letter to both me and the future granddaughter.When she was born, a surprise for dad was a new book, a journal for “Violet and Bam”, this one was meant for just he and Violet’s conversations. He wrote a “welcome to this earth” letter to her and thus their pen pal relationship began. Just turning 7, Violet was just learning to really write on her own when their love letters ended abruptly.

Upon our arrival the week after dad and Barb’s death, we spent hours with the San Miguel police investigators in their Airbnb, identifying their belongings, and organizing their things to bring back with us. The most heartbreaking moment of it all was seeing what he had brought with him on the trip to work on: the book he was writing of his childhood adventures and he and Violet’s “butterfly book.” It was his turn, and he hadn’t yet begun that entry, but he brought it with him, as he was planning to come see her dance her first Nutcracker that next week and my guess is he would have presented it to her then.I will never know what he was going to write that week in Mexico, but my guess is he would have told her how proud he was of her for dancing, and how they would continue to stay connected as she grew up through their writings in that book.  -Jennifer