Praying for my Grandma

The beautiful woman pictured her is my wonderful grandmother. Her smile is so familiar and dear. As a child I remember visiting their house: crawling to get to the built-in bench at the table for breakfast, "bumping" on my rear-end down their stairwell and sometimes crashing into the living room door below, listening to my grandmother humming her way through her day--especially in the kitchen--wish I could have a recording of that sound, playing pool in the "store" with cousins, exploring the attic above the "store" for hours on end, the occasional bat that would make our Christmas celebration "more entertaining" especially for the "KKK" cousins--you know who you are(!), the wringer-washer in the back entry way where I learned that you really shouldn't put your fingers in there, the

H-U-G-E garden between their house and "Whip & Pearl's," the hill up behind their property where we built a secret fort complete with a bathroom--uh, yeah..., the sand pit across the road where we would slide & dig and collect clay to fashion dishes for our fort, the church across the road (they lived on a corner) where in the winter we dug the most fabulous tunnels through the mounds of scooped-up snow, the gas pump where my dad would fill up after we arrived and before we left again--others would fill up there, too (they really did have a store, not open in my lifetime except for the gas pump, but my dad was raised as a storekeeper's kid), the barber chair where my grandma would give haircuts to her kids & grandsons (it sits in my brother's home now), running into town for "Jax" fries (yumm-o!)...there are so many more memories too numerous to recount!

Regardless, this dear grandmother of mine has been struggling with health issues as of late and now finds herself living in the nursing home in the town she lived near. She's way off in Michigan, and that distance is just too much to travel at this time of year, though I would dearly love to visit her one more time--and one more time after that, and one more time after that...

She is on my heart a lot, as are my many memories...