Happy Birthday, Nana!

ADDED DISCLAIMER: My fabulous mother-in-law would like me to note that the glass of wine she's holding in the following photos is the SAME glass, containing the SAME wine. Lovely, she is. Lush, she most definitely is not! The rest of us, however.... I love Pat Brockenborough. Which is quite handy, considering she's my mother-in-law. Isn't she beautiful? She turned 80 yesterday, so we had a little family gathering for her in her old favorite haunt, San Francisco. Where rumor has it that she dated Jack Kerouac while living here, on her own, back in the day. That finger snap the Beat Poets did? She invented that. She even has her own set of bongo drums. Hosting the birthday shin-dig in San Francisco was also quite handy, considering her oldest son, Bill Brockenborough, and his family (that's Julian and Lucas with him) live there. And Bruce Brockenborough (her middle son) and I have a place there. We flew in his kiddos, Joan and Patrick, for the occasion. We were just missing youngest son Jay Brockenborough. So we made a point to drink extra champagne in his honor. My SFBFF Eddie Herrador was on hand to make sure everything was gorgeous. Here's an example of his amazing flower arrangements. The three purplish flowers are ARTICHOKE PLANTS. I'm tempted to eat them later. Speaking of eats, we had a great meal prepared by Alison Gibson, one of the chefs at Google. Yes, you read that right. If you work at Google, a professional chef makes your breakfast and lunch. Life must be very good at Google. So the birthday girl was surrounded by her grandchildren (Lucas and Julian made the cake)… ...and surrounded by her daughters-in-law — that's Catherine on the right. Isn't she gorgeous? She's a very famous hypnotherapist in San Francisco... ...and, of course, her handsome husband Jim — otherwise known as Bop. It was a great birthday celebration — much better than last year when she and Bop were stuck in the dentist's office all day. But back to Jack Kerouac. All those poems and coffees and bongo drumming eventually wore on Pat. Frankly, she was bored with it all. So in 1954, she set sail on the SS Exochorda and even wrote a little book on all of her world-traveling adventures. I have a copy, if anyone would like to read it. And like Pat, herself, it's definitely saucy in parts! So we're now working on Volume 2, in which we're pulling together lots of Pat's famous Paducah Sun columns, which she began writing in the 1980s. With the Sun's permission (a-hem), we'll post them on iList Paducah and invite everyone to vote on your faves. Then we'll put 'em together in a little book and have a cruise-themed launch party in September. So look for details on that soon and help us honor Pat for all her good works — and words — over the years. Happy Birthday, Nana!

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