Ordinary Everydays

It's been a bit chilly and very rainy around here lately. A perfect day for comfort food. We decided on red potatoes with fresh green beans and ham. A definite favorite in our house. It's one of the few dishes that everyone in our little family loves. That doesn't happen very often let me tell you. Usually at least one person at the table has some sort of complaint.

As Maia was helping me snap the beans I was taken back to a time that seems forever ago. Me helping my great grandmother Ruth snap beans straight from her garden. I was a very little girl but those memories remain among some of my strongest.

I spent a lot of time with my great grandparents. They were loving and kind and nurturing. They had a very old farm with cows and gardens and a little dog named Mitzi. My great grandfather was actually born in that farm house in 1900.

My grandma told me lovely old stories from her childhood. Stories about life in a one room schoolhouse and her sister Belle. She let me jump off her davenport, while singing like a fool, in the middle of watching Lawrence Welk. We were crazy like that! She drew me nice warm baths with the pink bottle of Avon bubbles. I loved to sit under the Weeping Willow tree in her front yard and watch her tend her flower garden while, what seemed to me, hundreds of butterflies danced among the flowers. I adored her silly green polyester pants with bumblebees printed all over them. She had the patience of a saint! At least where I was concerned. Remember those beans we would snap? She froze them and we would always have some with dinner. As soon as they came out of the freezer, so she could prepare them, I would steal one or two. She would pretend she didn't notice me as I snuck up behind her and rolled that frozen bean up and down her wrinkly arm. She never complained. Not even once. She always played the game along with me. I'm pretty sure if my kids tried that trick with me I'd be telling them to knock it off...in a not so very nice voice!

My great grandpa spent a lot of time outside tending to his farm duties. I don't really know what he did because they didn't let me near the barn or cows that I can really remember. I do remember him walking to church one Sunday morning. I remember him picking me up in his big old green Chevrolet and driving me through covered bridges to get to his house. I always felt a little afraid of being driven around by someone quite so old. Sounds mean to say but it was a real fear of mine at the time. One time at the dinner table I asked if I could have some milk on my baked potato. He smiled and poured some on. That's how I ate my baked potatoes from that day forward when I was with them. No one else would let me do that. He never even complained when I banged the keys of the old upright! I learned a few years later, from my jr high guidance counselor, that my grandpa was a surveyor of the land. That he was well respected and loved in his community.

My memories of these two are so vivid, that when we were in Williamsburg this past Summer, I actually stopped dead in my tracks and burst into tears in the middle of a little shop. Scent can have such a powerful effect on our memories!! That shop smelled exactly like their house. Once I figured out that it was the homemade soap...I bought some. I store it in my linen closet so that every time I walk past I get a little whiff of my past.

While I know some things about who they are--I don't know a lot of detailed information. I don't know how they met or why they only had 1 child. I don't know if they loved Jesus or what their favorite colors were. I don't know what made them happy or sad. These things are all important to me. And I'm sure, somewhere down the line, someone will be asking the same questions about me--and my little family.

So here you have it. I am blogging again. Recording our memories so my kids have a record of our lives together. And so they can learn and remember who we each are individually as well. I started a brand new one so I could work on getting my old one made into a book. We all have an amazing story to tell. Even if that story is only about our ordinary everydays!!