When Frances Burke’s children were young, one of them carved “I love Mom” into the hearth of her wood-burning fireplace.
Thirty-some years ago, her kids all denied chiseling the words into the stone. Now, they all take credit.
The message was a permanent fixture in the Burke home, which was tucked in a dense stand of ponderosa pines at the end of a rural road in Black Forest. It was there when they graduated high school, when her son moved to Malaysia for work and when one of her cats turned 20.
