Mrs. Melissa Trent, all masked up, nonetheless ran into a head of hair she knew – silver-gray streaks in still-vivid auburn, never quite obeying any style it was in...

Eight-year-old Gracie Trent stopped and listened to the news of the day with her father, Sgt. Vincent Trent, which allowed him to see her putting her hands on her hips and shaking her head like she was

“See, I will never need to see a very scary movie, because that was our lives before Papa and Grandma came and got us."

“So, if lightning can make glass, why are we doing it the boring way?”

“I would say the most difficult thing for me as a hard-driving Army veteran as a grandfather raising my little grands and little cousin is to remember...

“So they used to think that if you sailed to the edge of the world you would fall off – so what happens when you click to the end of the Internet?”

“Somewhere under the rainbow/Where I live/I don't know where the pot is/But I have love to give...”

“If you think about it, though, Gracie, gummy bears have to be made in a weird factory, because you gotta have room for bears to come pose for their pictures.”

“I was just thinking about this – I think we can help our cats go vegetarian too, and there's a way because cats love stinky fish, and any food can stink when you have enough garlic on it.”

“OK Grandma Jubilee, so, what you're saying is, there's a chance, but, we gotta be really careful, because the difference between crash landing and not is just one more kilometer per hour.”

“Listen, if you do it right, you don't need a costume"

On a particular day, Capt. R.E. Ludlow was sorting certain documents about his father for his nephew Edwin III and niece Garlene...

"Yes, those jeans are cheap but you get what you pay for and those jeans' imitation low thread count weak seam behinds are the biggest blue red flags I have ever seen...

Sometimes, eleven-year-old Eleanor Ludlow got reminders of who her people were … a few of them were some dangerous individuals though in a special way harmless to her.

“OK, I have looked into this, and I have determined that the grass is only greener on the other side of the fence if they water and we don't.”

“So, as we grow up, we learn we are not God and so we have to expect some things to not work out.”

“OK, so did going through the Arc of Triumph in Paris make you more triumphant, Dad? Because if it did, we need to get up on that.”

“I'm telling you – that skunk has a gun! There's no other way to explain it!” “

“OK... we need to frame it, though … and it needs glitter!”

“Here y'all go – no, never mind,” eleven-year-old Velma Trent said as she re-covered the canvas she was working on.