Karen was standing in the middle of the room with her back towards me and her face in her hands. I came into the room slowly and came up behind her."K...ren, sweetheart, are you okay?" I asked, then I gently touched her shoulder and rubbed between her shoulder blades.My gentle touch and words must have done the trick because she whirled around and buried her face in my chest, sobbing all over again."Oh, James! I don't know what to do! He is so mean now! He hates being married and he hates being. Those lines had been used to create the bear, even to protruding fangs from the open mouth, and to long, sharp claws on the tips of the paws. To the right was another drawing. In this one the bear was lying down, red flowing from it, and the stick figures danced around it. The “dead” stick figure had been placed on a pile of sticks, and something red and yellow - obviously flames - shot from around it.“Who were they?” she whispered.“Nobody knows,” answered Bob. “I have a native American friend,. ?Now please untie me, I can’t get free.??Oh no, I don’t think so,? she answered, ?Carmel was interested in what was tying you up, so I told her. She wanted to see for herself.?To my horror I next heard Carmel’s voice saying, ?Hey cutie, you seem to be a pickle now, don’t you??I was mortified. Here I was completely naked, tied spread-eagled to the frame and there was Carmel seeing the whole thing. ?Okay, joke times over? you can untie me now? I said getting very embarrassed.?Hey look, he’s. Syntyche says, "that's grandmas? They are so beautiful."Mother says "you are right, Syn, they were beautiful. A very handsomecouple indeed. It was love at first sight, they said, when they met atthe Sorbonne. That's a famous university in Paris." Which one are we related to? They are both so pretty," asks Tabitha.The adults smile. The seven year olds probably don't have the firmestgrasp of genetics. "The one on the left, Drusilla, is my birth mother,and the matriarch of the McCarthur.