I'm sitting here in my quiet house. My kids are playing outide with neighbors, Sweetness is taking a nap. This could be any day of the year, except it's Christmas Eve. I'm trying to be busy, cleaning, packing, cooking, but my mind is rambling. A couple weeks ago my Gran was diagnosed with terminal cancer. No one knows where it started from, how long she's had it, all they know is it's every where and it's moving fast. It's doubtful that she will see New Years.
So now you know why my mind is spinning, time to let out all the mental clutter:
I had two very differnt grandmothers with almost the same name. Flois and Floyce. My Gran is who is in the nursing home right now and wandering thru my mind. She wasn't the warm cudly grandmother who covered you in kisses. The entire time I was growing up she didn't even put our pictures up in the front part of her house, not the proper way to decorate you see. She is my prim and proper grandmother, so unlike my Mawmaw. Mawmaw was the warm snuggly grandmother. Gran is not a woman who doles out affection or "i love you's" She just isn't comfortable with that. I sit here thinikng of all the ways we spent time together, and her love shines through in the time spent with Tabba and I and the paitience she had with us.
Gran sewed all of our fancy christmas and Easter dresses when we were growing up, I didn't appreciate just how much work that took til I was grown and sewing a few things for my own daughter. We spent many nights at gran and Gramp's house, she was always fun. We made innumerable cookies and treats for every holiday in her kitchen. She spent about a week of my life teaching me to roll dough into a ball the size of a small walnut. As I sit here looking back a few things are striking me. She always let us play in her kitchen. Tabitha and I made some kind of concoction out of all of her fancy spices and what ever else we could get our hands on. She never fussed, she would hand us new stuff to dump in our mixing bowls and dutifully pretend to eat every creation. Gran also always let us play in her expensive makeup. Tabitha and I would slap so much Este Lauder on that we looked like rabid clowns, and Gran would just laugh and clean us up. Being wasteful and silly are not things my Gran would ever abide by, except, she let us be just that every time we came over.
Gran also cooked for our family every saturday night and sunday after church. She would make huge meals and we all ate together, prayed together and then watched HeeHaw together. She put so much work and time into us.
My best memories of my Gran are of Christmas Eve. Every Christmas Eve we went to church with my Gran and Gramp to thier candlelight service. It's a very importnat night to a child because they let me hold a real live lit candle. After the songs and the service I would be dieng to get back to Gran's house, knowing that presents were waiting for us all. Gran was a show stopper when it came to food. She always believed that fifty percent of cooking was held in the presentation of the food. Every Christmas Eve she out did herslf. We would walk in and she had more cookies, tarts, pies, candies, and punch than the six of us could eat in a month. Everything would be just so, on it's own stand or in a colorful dish.
I guess in the love languages thinking Gran would be an acts of service and a quality Time type of gal. As a child I just couldn't understand her stand-off-ish nature. Turns out she was never trying to be prickly, she was showing love in the only ways she felt comfortable.
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