I wasn’t home schooled, but I was definitely home educated by my mother, Helen Yonge Lind.

She encouraged me to read, and helped me break the rules when the librarian at the Kaimuki Library said I was too young to venture into the adult book section.

She also gave me the best single piece of advice ever, which I later found is applicable far beyond its original context. When she finally got tired of my endless questions how to make this or how to make that, she finally told me: “If you can read, you can cook.”

I’ve later applied that in many other areas of life.

This photo was taken on the steps from the living room of my parent’s house in Kahala, leading down onto the lanai. It’s a scene that no longer exists, because when we renovated the old house after her death, we built a back deck at the same level as the house, rather than a lanai at ground level.

In any case, I can still remember this scene, repeated many times, the anticipation when turning the crank on the little music box and waiting for the punch line, “Pop! Goes the weasel!” Somehow knowing how it was going to end didn’t take away from the pleasure I got from it!

My mother died at the end of January 2013, a few months short of her 99th birthday.