My Grandmother just turned 90, on her birthdays we try to write down out favorite memories of her and we place them in a memory book for her. In looking back over my life I find that there are to many wonderful memories of her to narrow it down to just one or two.
As long as I can remember my Grandmother sang to us, we loved to hear her sing, I still love to sit close as she rocks the newest babies of the family and sings to them. When I got older I realized many of the songs were pretty morbid, but we loved them anyway, or maybe it was just hearing her voice we loved. There was the bear song (the bear gets killed by a hunter) the prison wall song (he flies over the walls after his execution) Red wing (my favorite) they both drown swimming to meet each other, Mr Dunderbeck gets ground into sausage one night by his wife while she has a nightmare, one of the two little boys gets wounded in the war.
From my Grandma I learned not only to quilt but to love it, when I was very little I played under the quilt frames, when I got older I learned to tie a quilt and then she taught me to quilt, there was always a quilt on a frame ready to be worked on.
I learned to love and trace family history, Gram spent hours telling me family stories, and teaching me how to look up information, or helping me copy her pages.
Grandma's house has always been a sanctuary for me, many years of my childhood were not the most pleasant but whenever we were at Grams the world was a better place, to this day grams house is a place where nothing else in the world matters, all the stress and worries just melt away and it is a place where the outside world does not matter.
I loved going to the ballet with Gram, it was a treat sitting next to her, because she always kept treats in her purse, we had to open the candy sticks really quiet so we did not bother anyone sitting next to us.
Grandma loves turquise jewelry and once when I had on a new necklace I was showing her she ran off to the house and came back out wearing what must have been 90% of her turquiose, she had at least 2 rings on over finger, several necklaces and bracelets that she showed off to me and then told me the story behind every piece, it was so cute.
Grandma always made us home made valentines, they were perfect and every year we looked forward to recieving them.
My Grandma wraps the most gorgeous Christmas packages, every package is amazing and it is sometimes hard to open them, they are so pretty, on my tree every year is a bird she had made ribbon wings (to match the ribbon on my pkg) from one of my packages, I can no longer remember what was in the gift but I remember how much I loved the wrapping.
My house displays many painting my Grandmother has done, she is a talented artist not only with paint, she has also made gorgeous feather and ribbon pictures and wreaths. She is a talented florist, to this day I love the smell of eucalyptus because it reminds me of going to visit Grandma at the floral shop.
Grandma taught us all about flowers, I remember many nature walks where she would teach us all the different types of flowers.
I have been lucky to be blessed with my Grandmother, I am grateful that not only my children but also my grandchildren have been able to learn from her and to create their own special memories of a lady who has touched many many lives.
