I'm grateful for: My Grandma!
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| Grandma and me circa 2002. |
On this day, 93 years ago, one of my favorite people in the whole wide world was born - my Grandma!
Growing up, I spent lots of quality time with my Grandma. I have such great memories of us that I will cherish for a lifetime - memories of countless nights where the two of us had slumber parties in the living room on her burnt orange hideaway bed, listening to 8 tracks, and staying up late to have midnight snacks; a myriad of mornings where the two of us went on long walks to Gaisman park and Jerry's Sno Cones; endless afternoons where we shelled peas or pecans on the front porch andtalked about life; and lots of evenings where we watched daylight fade while swinging on her big swing in the backyard and picking vegetables from her garden to make dinner.
And there are SO many little things I will never forget (in no particular order whatsoever):
>her deep freezer and all the goodies inside - especially Pop Ice;
>her big aquarium that she loved and the countless times we bought fish for it and cleaned it together;
>her love of pimento cheese sandwiches and circus peanuts;
>her brown recliner and her giraffe pillow;
>her old tattered Bible full of notes;
>potluck dinners and Sunday mornings at Wells Station;
>her colored glass candy dishes full of gumdrops;
>her orange phone holder that played 'Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin';
>snacks that included her homemade French fries, green beans and onions from her garden, or, one of her all time favorites, French onion dip and chips;
>the endless array of bowls and other kitchen contraband that she would give me for bath time;
>how she often slept with her arm over her face;
>how she always wore a bit of 'rouge' and lipstick, did her hair, and painted her nails;
>her favorite shades of nail polish;
>the way we both loved cheese - it was our favorite midnight snack;
>her insistence on never throwing anything out whether food or sentimental things - like how she once gave me a bag of marshmallows from the 80s when it was well into the 90s and said, 'They're ok, they're just a little hard.', likewise she was always telling me to just cut the mold off cheese - 'it's still good!' she'd say, similarly, when we were cleaning out her apartment we found deeds she had to land she and grandpa sharecropped in the 1930s or 40s;
>her dining room table and all the holidays we shared around it;
>her making someone be 'Santa' and hand out all the gifts at Christmas - I always was dying to be Santa;
>her little ceramic Christmas tree with the colored lights;
>the fake fruit she had around the house, especially the glass grapes that were orange;
>her record player & 8 track player and listening to gospel quartets and Elvis on them;
>her hanging stuff out to dry and thus having lots of clothes pins that I loved to play with;
>her China cabinet and Grandpa's Bible inside;
>all her many picture albums that I used to spend hours looking through;
>how she'd talk to anyone, no one she ever met was a stranger;
>how she would take the Greyhound bus all over America and then tell me fascinating stories about the people she met and the places she went;
>her laugh;
>the way she laughed so big you could see her crowns;
>the way she would pop out her plate with the three false teeth on it to make me laugh;
>her crooked toes;
>her 'walking shoes' that were almost always white Reebok's;
>her reading glasses;
>the way she would make a fist with her thumb sticking out and while moving it around say 'I'm gonna getcha!' before tickling you;
>her love of word search puzzles;
>the way she always scrawled notes in the margins of everything;
>the fact that she not only had a lot of friends but also always had a 'man friend' & she would talk on and on about them, laughing and 'carrying on' (as she would say) - so cute;
>her talking about 'taking exercise' down at Gaisman gym;
>her blue Buick -that was stolen twice - and the paint jobs she got for it, she loved that color blue;
>the blue Grand Am that she replaced it with - that I later drove;
>her bean bag chairs that I loved playing with and the fact that she would let me take them outside;
>her hands;
>her rings, especially the ring with her kids' birthstones;
>the funny things she would say during interviews I did with her for school;
>the brown stool that she always had;
>how much she loved for it to be July so that we could go to the Roane reunion and how she always spent the months before looking forward to it;
>how she always,without fail, called to sing you 'Happy Birthday' on your birthday;
>how she rarely ever missed a play, piano recital, sporting event (etc) that I was in and how she always let me know how proud of me she was for whatever it was I was doing;
>the way she made everything better when I was having a bad day;
>how she kept my secrets & laughed at my jokes;
>and her inability to let someone get off the phone or leave her house - oh, how I wish I could have just one more of those never-ending phone calls or visits with her!
In light of all these great memories I have of her, I wanted to do something special to remember her birthday, so I decided to donate a water filter in her memory!
My Gradma's water filter is 1 of 3 filters that we delivered to Tbang village where my friend &co-worker Khath lives.
Her filter is at a school where 197 families' kids come. At this school alone, 500 kids will be provided with clean drinking water! And it's very fitting that her filter is at a school because my Grandma's last part-time job was as a cafeteria lady at an elementary school in her neighborhood :)
These were the first Trailblazer water filters to ever be delivered to Tbang village, and her filter was the first delivery of the day, so needless to say, the people were overjoyed!
I think my Grandma would be overjoyed to know that her water filter is helping so many kids, and I think she would also be overjoyed to know that I helped make her filter :)
As for me, I'm glad to know that now her memory will not only bring happiness to me but will also bring happiness to lots of kids!
And for the birthday girl (who would always call to sing you 'Happy Birthday' on your birthday): ♪Happy Birthday to you, Thelma Pauline Roane Inmon (AKA Grandma)! ♪ Hope you're having a ball up there & celebrating today as only you know how!
