Grandma

My Grandma died yesterday.  She was 101 years old.  What do you say about someone who has been there your whole life?  Their absence makes the world lose a piece of its flavor.  

It doesn't feel right.

I know you may think that you have the best grandma in the whole world, but I have the best grandma in the universe.  At 4'9" or so, she didn't look like a powerhouse, but her quiet, cheerful presence made wherever she was a better place.  She was strong and had a will of steel.  She passed on a passionate love of tea to a select few of us.  You could always count on Grandma for having a pack (or ten) of Doublemint gum, a stash of lemon drops, and a package of mini Twix if you wanted one. 

My Grandma was from a big family, and only one of two girls, so she had to put up with a lot of brothers fighting.  This caused her to be quite a peacemaker (she HATED fighting and strife).  Her sister was about eleven years older than she was, so her sister had to take charge and do many of the jobs around the house, but my Grandma would help her and stick up for her in the face of so many brothers.  

My Grandma loved roses.  The house that she lived in for fifty years had what she always called "Tropicana" roses.  My Grandpa was a meticulous gardener and the heads of the roses were the size of small melons.  They would bring in a big blossom (just the head of it) and float it in a round glass bowl so you could see it and smell it.  

My Grandma was born when the Model T came out in 1914.  She was born in Quebec, Canada, and spoke French as a girl.  When she was about ten years old, she emigrated to the United States with her older sister and brothers.  Her mom stayed back with the littlest ones and came after.  When she came to school in the United States, she was extremely shy.  She gained quick fame, however (much to her horror), when she won the spelling bee for the entire school.  She won an atlas and then when she progressed on to the next level and won again, she won a dictionary.  Our family still has it.  When my son had trouble spelling, she would just tell him gently, "It's easy.  Just take it slow and sound out every piece."   

When she got older, her sister was hanging out with a boy who had a younger brother her age.  Would you believe the two sisters married two brothers?  They were a close family - no need to fight about when to have family parties to accommodate the schedules of the in-laws!  

She went through the Great Depression as a teenager, and this experience caused her to be both frugal and to live simply.  She loved sparkly things, but tempered her glamourous side with the backdrop of remembering the Depression, never being wasteful nor splurging on something unnecessary, although I do remember her having a tiara.  I was in awe of it.  The house she raised her children in was about 850 square feet and had no basement.  She made it work.  

She loved baseball and hockey, specifially the Detroit Tigers and the Red Wings.  Her brother was a baseball player and her father was a hockey player in the league that was around before the NHL started.  She had hockey bobbleheads and jerseys and you could call her any day of the week to ask her what time the game was on and which channel it would be shown on.  She hated football and boxing, though, because it looked like those guys were fighting (it probably reminded her of her brothers fighting).  She loved Michigan State women's basketball and had a signed photo from the coach as well as one from Coach Izzo hanging in her room.  

Most of all, she loved her family.  Her place was filled with pictures of all of her children, her grandchildren, and her great-grandchildren.  If you sat down with her for a couple minutes, you'd be hearing how smart, funny, quick, talented, and amazing they were.  She would laugh when thinking of her second son, who always asked her if she wanted a beer (she hated beer).  She would smile wistfully when thinking of her oldest son and say he was the best baby anyone every had, and the easiest kid in the world.  She adored her daughter and talked to her everyday.  Her grandkids were a source of joy to her - and we  all adored her.  She made every single one of us feel like we were her absolute favorite (I mean, they felt like it, but I know I was).  We would fight over who got to sit next to Grandma and say, "She's MY Grandma."  Being a peacemaker, she would want us to share, but I know she enjoyed it a little anyway.  She thought her great-grandchildren were so special.  She saw the similarities in them and their parents and their grandparents and it reminded her of them when they were little.  

My Grandma was great at a lot of things, but I have to tell you, she could tear up crossword puzzles like nobody's beeswax.  My brother and I would sit with her (as adults) and go through the newspaper crossword and we'd sit there for like eleventy minutes and come up with nothing, and then when we gave up, she would instantly (but gently) tell us the answer (so we didn't feel like total bozos).  How did she DO that?  Crossword puzzles are so stinkin' hard.  She also could guess Wheel of Fortune really quickly.  She crocheted full sized blankets for all of her grandchildren and then made baby blankets for our children because she knew one day her arthritis would get so bad that she would not be able to do it anymore.  She taught us all how to crochet, whether you are a boy or a girl, it was a skill to have.  My brother made seventy-nine foot chains to use as whips and leashes for his stuffed animals.  My cousin Jill and I like it enough to make piles of hats.  She made fantastic macaroni and cheese and each of us special birthday cakes.  

She always remembered everyone's birthday, even up until the very last few days of her life - she told me to make sure my son got his birthday card.  And when your birthday did come,  you'd get a phone call from her and as soon as you said hello, you'd hear her singing happy birthday to you.  

I will miss her very much.  My Wednesdays will not be the same without painting her nails, sitting around chatting about what's new, and having a cup of tea.  These last couple months, I would bring her laundry back and hang it up in her closet for her, and she would always say, "Oh, you have to do all this work!  What a pain I am!"  (For the record - my sister was doing the laundry, I just had to return it and hang it up.)  She was never a pain.  She was a joy.  

Hug your people.  Even though they seem like they'll be there forever, even 101 years - it's always too short somehow. 

Peace, love, and hugs, 
Ms. Daisy

Friends and the river of life

The good Lord has given me many blessings, the best of them eternal and some pink glittery extras just for fun.  (I have totally always wanted to start off a sentence with "The good Lord has given me many blessings".  And now I did!  Thanks for being here for it.  It sounds like I need to be in a rocking chair with an afghan - that's lowercase, as in blanket, not uppercase, as in a human.)

One of those blessings that spans both the pink glittery now time and the eternal are my friends.  I have awesometastic friends.  The crap part is that they always move away!  (What!  Is it my deodorant??  Was it something I said?  I'm barely opinionated, so it couldn't be that...)

I keep a 3x5 card of a list of my homegirls who I have been close to over the years who have moved far away from me.  It's a good reminder that this world is not static.  We're passing through and going on our journey.  

Some of my lovelies grew up with me and we went to school together.  I have one dear friend who I have shared an entire life with.  We had childhood together, we went through school together,  were on swim teams together, ate midnight peanuts together, made up pretend commercials together, we even went to university together (and even got to be roommates one year).  She's a few time zones away now, but time and space can't squish a friendship that has been woven throughout a lifetime.  If you knew either one of us, you might be really surprised that we are friends because on the issues that define many people, we aren't even close.  But that doesn't matter in a friendship and it has taught me that a lot of people are missing out on wonderful people because they could never imagine being friends with someone so far outside of their usual accepted circle.  

So, moral of the story is - stop being an idiot.  That guy with the bumper sticker you hate that makes your blood boil might actually be a really cool person.  But you never took the time to figure that out because you're too busy running him off of the road.  So try it.  You might like it.  It's called being loving.

I have the loveliest of besties, too.  These people are more like sisters (and HECK, one of them IS my sister) than just friends.  Special people who were made to share things that are quite unthinkable to even barely vocalize in front of your own mirror, they work it out, laugh with you, and accept you for the 100% crazy person that you are.  They are an example of this life of Christ in the flesh - loving you, serving you, carrying your burdens with you, and praying for you.  They are those with whom you could spend entire years of your life just straight talking with and never run out of things to say.  They make you tea, encourage your eclectic ideas (and self), go shopping with you, get loud and excited with you, and even feed you.  You know who you are and I love you and I could write novels about the ways in which you are totally awesomesauce to me.

I also have divas!  My divas are an eclectic collection of extremely different and fascinating people who love each other and love to have fun.  Divas can get real, get crazy, wear wigs, cry (for joy and for weeping in restaurants over a glass of wine), get fitted for undergarments, get glittered, get sassy, make you pee your pants with laughter, and can't get past 8:30 p.m. without breaking out into hysterical uproarious conversaional topics.  If you've had a bad week, it gets cured STAT with these ladies on it.  They are those who figure on a good weekend getaway and one of the criteria is that it be far away from other people so we don't wake them up and get kicked out.  Whether you're getting kicked out of a hotel room, shopping in Chicago, going for sushi and martinis, having Christmas/lake parties or spending hours in a parking lot in the back of a minivan because you closed out Starbucks, divas are a refreshing fountain of joy in the humdrum of the everyday patterns of life.  (And for the record, just in case ya'll think I'm overboard, I couldn't drink a martini if my life depended on it, in case you were wondering what kind of a wild child I really was.)

I have had sunshiney people that walked with me through post-grad stuff, those that have trudged with me in the depths of the days of babies offering their support, their stories and their camraderie of understanding (like what it means to them right now when you explain about how in that stage of life, while you were at the mall, your offspring thought it would be a good time to take the world's biggest dump, which climbed out of the diaper, up the back, and was nary bathing the back of their little head with poo).  

There are people you found out you loved and had so much in common with too late - they moved as you were getting to know each other.  (Now who are you going to talk about triathlons and saunas with?)

There are special, lovely and generous people who come from half a world away, step into your life, brighten it up, make it lovelier (even bring you tea, teach you about foot paths, boots, and whirlies) and are whisked away, as fast as they came in.  As they do, a little piece of your life and heart flies away with them.  You're back to where you were before they arrived, but both happier and sadder for the whole thing.  

There are even cute people who send you mittens.   Homemade ones.  GLITTERY PINK ONES!!  Of course THEY are going to move away.  :(  (Now who are you going to ask your dental questions to?!)

Some go away and come back.  And you're very glad they did.  I have one friend who pops in and out of places.  (She's busy with Zumba, you know.)  

They never leave your life.  Even if they're really gone, they gave you something of themselves and you are different because of it.

Some leave because their time is up here on this earth.  It really makes me recognize that the good Lord did mean for this place to be eternal (until we screwed it up, way to go Adam - no, not the HFCS Adam, the first Adam) because saying goodbye really  just stinks. In the last few years, I've had two cousins pass on from this world at very young ages.  You never know when you'll be getting on that bus for your last trip.  I hope you've made your time and your priorities match up.

Whoever you are and wherever you fit, I'm glad you've impacted my life.  And that's enough mushy crap because you guys know I really don't have a heart anyway, it's made of rocks and ice and devoid of feelings, straight up like a drill sargent Geico commercial.

;)

Peace, love, mushy stuff and here's to good friends!
Ms. Daisy