Thursday Thirteen Return

Thirteen Things about My Grandma I got a call from my mom last week telling me that my grandma had broken her hip. Knowing what I do about health and health-related topics - both from my mom's dinner table discussions of the day's surgical cases and from my current career - I know that when an elderly person breaks a hip, it's not a good thing. Not a good thing at all. Elderly people many times don't have the strength to recover from such a fall and surgery, and many of them don't live much past a year of the incident. My grandma is a very old-bodied woman who has had many physical and mental ailments since I can remember. Her breaking a hip is pretty much the last thing she can handle. The past week has been one of discussions on her status, what might happen in the next few days, what inevitably will happen in the next few weeks. When you've been close to a grandparent, and they are on the brink of passing away, you start to think about a million different memories from childhood times at their home. So, for my return to Thursday Thirteen after a few weeks' hiatus, I give you thirteen of my favorite memories of my grandma. 1. Her green nightgown. My grandma had the most beautiful dressing gowns you've ever seen. They were made of layers and layers of silk and chiffon. To a little girl obsessed with dress up and being pretty, nothing was better than dressing up in grandma's green nightgown and prancing around the house. 2. Her ceramics. When I was a small child, my grandma had a small business with her sister and a close friend. They molded and painted ceramics which they would then sell at arts and crafts fairs. I remember specific items that she let me paint with her - a small bunny rabbit, little brown teddy bears, Easter eggs. Painting the crafts was fun, but even better was when the kiln was opened and our crafts had magically turned from dull shades of pinks, greens and blues to vibrant splashes of fuscia, heather green, and cobalt. 3. Her baseball pancakes. My sister really holds the throne with this one, but it's one of my favorites as well. My grandma had (sister now has) this old pancake pan that would hold 8 to 10 balls of pancakes. She'd pour a little bit of batter into the hole, turn them over with the toothpick, and they'd come out in little baseball shaped pancakes. For some reason those pancakes tasted better than any other ones in the world. 4. Easter egg hunts. Every year for Easter, we went to my grandma's house for a huge Easter egg hunt. All of the adults would go outside to hide eggs while us little kids were stuck in a back room with all the shades shut so that we couldn't peek at all. After the eggs were finally hid, we tore through the yard trying to find the eggs. I remember the sound of my grandma laughing as she watched us run through the grass and climb up poles and dig through bushes for the eggs. 5. Her doll cakes. Back in the day, my grandma made the most beautiful cakes. The favorite, and the one requested every birthday, was the doll cake. She'd make a delicious angel food cake and place a doll standing upright in the middle of the cake. Then, she'd decorate the cake as a big Southern belle gown of the doll with different shades of frosting. She'd decorate the top of the doll with frosting to look like the top of the dress. Each year we got to pick out whatever colors we wanted, and she'd make use the doll cake of our dreams. 6. My trip to Florida. When each of us grandkids turned 10, our grandparents took us to Florida on vacation. I actually got to go twice - the second time was with my cousin Ashley because everyone wanted to make sure she had someone to go on rides with; gram and gramp were a little older by then. But my trip to Florida was really special to me, because I got a whole week of attention all to myself. We went to Walt Disney World for a week with my family, but then for a whole second week I went with just grandma and grandpa to the ocean. It was wonderful. We picked oranges from someone's backyard (don't remember whose!), stayed at a hotel with a pool and beachfront access, and swam around in the ocean. It was my first time seeing the blue vastness of ocean saltwater. 7. Christmas Eve. Every year, Christmas Eve was spent at my grandma's house. Some years we went to church beforehand or afterward, but Christmas Eve dinner and gifts were with my grandma. It was one of the best days of the whole year. The first thing we did was run to the tree to find our new ornament from the year. Each of us grandkids got a new ornament every year. We'd eat a big dinner with the whole family, and then the girls would clean up the kitchen in anticipation of gift-opening. No gifts were opened until after dinner was done and cleaned up. And then boy did the gifts flow! 8. Her tea cups. My grandma had a collection of a few different things. The most notable for the majority of the grandchildren is her Precious Moments collection. She has probably well over a hundred of those. But for me, the best collection was her tea cups. She had a shadow box hung in her house with about 25 tea cups sitting in each of the little windows. I always wanted to play with them, but that was one thing that we weren't allowed to touch. There are two in particular that I love - they have a solid colored saucer and outside to the cup, but at the bottom of the cup is a beautiful painted on image. It's like a little surprise at the end of a cup of tea. 9. Her Black Hills Gold. My grandma has so much jewelry it's ridiculous. She has a whole rubbermaid container filled with jewelry boxes that are filled with pieces of jewelry. Some of the pieces that I most remember are her Black Hills Gold rings. She had what seemed like hundreds of pieces of Black Hills Gold in her collection. 10. Her porcelain doll. My grandma had a porcelain doll sitting on her dresser for as long as I can remember. I loved her. I thought she was the prettiest doll I'd ever seen. She had brown hair in Shirley Temple-like curls and a frilly little pink dress. I haven't seen her in years, but I can remember very clearly what she looks like. 11. Walking to her house. From the time I was born until the time I was 6, we lived five blocks away from my grandma. As a very small child, I remember my mom making Walking Salads (cored apples with peanut butter and raisins shoved into the hollowed our core), and sending us up to grandma's house for an afternoon. We were lucky that she lived so close to us - it allowed me to have all of these great memories about her. 12. Ice cream in the freezer. I literally just remembered this one while I was writing this blog entry. My grandparents always had ice cream cones in the freezer. Always. They had those drumsticks with the vanilla ice cream, the peanuts on the top and the chocolate on the bottom of the cone. And they always had candy, too. Mountains of candy in the dishes. Each time at grandma's house was a sugar rush. 13. The smell of her house. I can remember the smell of my grandma's house if I just close my eyes and picture the living room. I have no idea what made up that smell, but it was a warm and comforting one. Happy Thursday to everyone. I ask that you keep my grandma and my family in your thoughts and prayers.

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