In my family, it is tradition to send a special package on New Years Eve in DC.  This year, my Uncle Graves was hesitant that I do not send a package, so he took it away when he saw it sitting on my porch.  Luckily, I saw where he hid it.

I tried to argue with him since last year that it is a new year's eve washington d.c. tradition, but he would not listen to me.  He just walked away.  I even e-mailed and texted him, but he would not ever listen to me.

Every New Years Eve in DC for fifty years, a package was sent from this large brown house to the doorstep of the white one in Baltimore.  It was traditional.  There was so much thought and time put into this gift year after year, but Graves was so intent that I was just not going to send it this year.  After all the time I spent working on it, I was determined to send it.

When my mother died, she left with me the responsibility of sending a quilt to someone who has helped someone else.  I was instructed to make a different, unique pattern each year with a special message for the recipient.  For years, I had to watch my mother quilt and sew in order to learn how to do what she did.  It took me about seventeen years to learn who to send the blankets to and why.  I was not having Uncle Graves ruin all of my hard new year d.c. work.  There was going to have to be some way for me to send this package out.

Finally, I decided to feed him a lot of food so that he would go to sleep, and I could leave the house.  I gave him a lot of turkey and milk, so he got really tired.  Then, he took a nap on the couch, and I was able to slip out of the door long enough to send the New Years Eve in DC package of quilts to the deserving person in Indiana who helped fifty million homeless people build houses for themselves.