Opening Doors

Fio's day had its usual ups and downs, but the highlights were a nice lunch with Elder Son at Fish Daddy's and finishing off both her Halloween door and the maternal line acrostic that she'd been banging her head on the wall about for the last two weeks. The door was easy, a lot of fun--in fact, it was the best Halloween door she'd ever composed. Not that anyone will see it of course, because Fiorella lives so far back off the road that you would have to drive several yards down to the house to catch a glimpse of it. Unfortunately, Fio still doesn't know how to post pics on her blog without the help of one of those handsome young men from Verizon, but if you're on Facebook, you can look up your faithful correspondent under her alter ego's name.
       The acrostic started out as fun a while back, then became so horribly complicated that Fiorella, after several abortive attempts, shoved it aside. The problem was in the pens of many colors. Artist that she is, Fiorella kept setting higher and more rigid goals for herself involving identifying relationships, making sure the colors worked against each other, and balancing the composition as a whole--which is impossible with a real live family. But the page of graph paper is finished now and will be matted and taken off to FedEx Kinkos's for photocopying today.
       Actually, the acrostic was something of a thrill to Fio because she became acquainted, at least on paper, with more of her mother's side of the family. She knew her two first cousins and the offspring of the younger, but not of the elder (who died several years ago). Now she knows not only the names of the two sons of her oldest cousin, but also of their respective children. It's like opening a Christmas present. How many other people are there out there in the world that Fio doesn't know shes related to?