April 1st…The Day of Fools.

It also happens to be sci-fi author, Anne McCaffrey’s birthday. If she were alive, she’d be 88 today. I always remembered it was Anne’s birthday because she shared her day with my grandmother, who died just a year or two before Anne McCaffrey did.

Growing up, my grandmother was my mother, and she exposed me to her generation’s golden age of movies. Films with actors and actresses like James Stewart, Cary Grant, Clark Gable, Ginger Rogers, Katharine Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, and Judy Garland.

Anne McCaffrey exposed me to a world of fantasy and sci-fi, where women could be powerful. They could be space explorers and captains. They could be leaders. (You can read more about her influence on me here, in my first Flashback Friday.)

I took great joy in pranking my grandmother, even though she never fell for it. (I guess raising 5 children made her prank-proof.) I miss that.  I miss our hour long daily chats over the phone, too.

So today when I write, I write for her. And for Anne. And for a million other stars whose lights no longer shine. Or are just beginning to glow in the depths of space.

No one is a fool who journeys forward and onward.