This was this the piece I did for class this week, this one I had to dig deep about something that was from me...Entitled "Memories Treasured" One tends to remember a grandmother with childhood eyes. The memories slathered in caring and dripping love from every pore. I was but a child when I lost her, a girl on the cusp of womanhood, for all the desire of wanting to be a woman grown, a child nonetheless. Fifteen years young, we spent a summer together, her a nurse, me a free young girl tearing up the summer with her best friend Kim. The memories are as fresh for me today age the age of Forty-Two as they were that long ago summer at the sweet young age of fifteen. Happy Memories that bring tears of joy as well as tears of sadness to my eyes in the remembrance of them. That was the summer of firsts. The first time I saw my grandmother swim, the first time I saw her watch a scary movie and the first time I saw her go camping. It was also the summer of lasts, for it was the last time she did all those things too. Family reunion that summer was up at Seneca Lake, one of the Finger Lakes in Central New York State. Camping. Now, as a kid, I didn’t mind the camping, of course I got to sleep in the camper with Grandma, though she snored something fierce. The night before we left t go camping that weekend, Grandma was flipping through the television channels and settled on one that appeared to be talking about camping. And since we were going camping she left it there. When I came into the living room and saw what it was she was watching, I was confused. You see, she had stopped and started watching ‘Friday the 13th’. I couldn’t tell you which one of the horrible movies it was, but I knew she wouldn’t like it. “Grandma, you aren’t going to want to watch…” I began. “Oh my God, why didn’t anyone tell me what this was?” She asked after watching a woman get a dagger in the eye. I giggled, I couldn’t help myself, “I tried, but I wasn’t quick enough.” She didn’t turn the channel though, and we watched it together, jumping at every little thing that happened. The next day, we left for Seneca Lake and a weekend of camping and family reunion. Grandpa got a ticket that day, because he was driving on Interstate 17 (before the changed the name of it) in the outside lane. He of course was doing that because it was the smoother of the two lanes, which really wasn’t that much better than the inside lane. Grandma had been trying to tell him to move over to the right lane and he just wouldn’t. The police officer gave grandpa the ticket and we began our journey again, this time in the worst lane. “I told you to get over Walt, you shouldn’t ride in that outside lane,” Grandma said. “I’m the one driving, this lane is too bumpy.” “I told you that you would get a ticket, and look what you have gone and done,” She answered back smugly. Grandpa was smart enough not to get involved, she had had her say, leave it at that. Impatient as I was when I was a girl, I of course kept saying “Are we there yet?” What kid doesn’t do that? Grandma was patient with me, and I think Grandpa just ignored me, knowing grandma would answer. When we finally arrived, I took off with cousins and when I came back to where we had parked, the camp site was set up, and a big campfire was blazing brightly in the dark. Hot dogs really do taste better when you cook them on a stick over open flame, nothing better than that in the whole world to a kid. We had s’mores too. Back then I thought that there couldn’t be anything better in the whole world than to go camping with the whole family. That night, we went to bed, and other than grandma’s snoring it was great, until about two o’clock in the morning, when grandma woke me up. She needed to go to the bathroom and didn’t want to walk down to the bath house to do it by herself. “Why can’t you go by yourself, it’s just down the hill there,” I sleepily said. “Jason will come out of nowhere to get me,” she replied. “Grandma, that’s just a movie, he isn’t real. Isn’t that what everyone tells me when I get scared like that?” “Laurie, that’s just not the point.” Groggily I got out of the bed, stepped over my mom and dad who were sleeping on the next bed, and together Grandma and I went to pee. Now, looking back on this memory, I am not all that certain what a fifteen year old girl could have done but scream like a little girl if Jason did indeed come out of nowhere to attack us. But grandma seemed satisfied for the company, and I always wanted to please her, and vice versa, which leads me to the next important memory of my grandmother than summer. Swimming. I begged her to come swimming with me. I had my swim suit on, and she simply told me that she hadn’t brought her swim suit. “You have shorts I argued with her, and they will dry out when you lay them on a bush after you change later on,” I can still hear the excitement in my voice at swimming with Grandma in Seneca Lake. “I just can’t ever say no to you, can I?” Grandma smiled and we walked together to the small swim area at the lake’s shore by the campground. We both waded in to our knees and then sat down in the water. She smiled and laughed like a young girl, and I loved hearing it. I can’t recall how long she was in the water with me, but I don’t think it was for very long, but it left me with a memory to recall for my whole life. Happiness to draw on in times when I might need it. I have been through so much in my life, and there were times when I thought that maybe grandma had been there for me, standing beside me, holding me up, just when I thought I was fall. She believed in me, she made me strong, and with that knowledge came responsibility. I knew I had to grow up that way she would want me too, so she would keep watch over me and stay with me. I doubt that there has ever been a time that her face hasn’t come to me in a dream or a thought, in a time of need. We lost her, but she is still here, in our hearts, in our minds and most of all in our memories. I feel it has been a whole lifetime I have lived without Grandma in my life. She has missed my graduation, my first and then my second marriage, she missed the birth of my children. I look back on these happy memories on the cusp of me becoming what I miss the most, a grandmother. I miss Grandma Loretta terribly, it has been so many years that she has been gone, yet I feel as if it was just yesterday that I had to say goodbye to the woman I loved so very much. She lives on though, not only in my fertile memory but in my mother, in me, and in my daughter who now holds a child within her, growing and waiting to enter the world. One child in each generation carries the looks of the last. By that I simply mean that my mother looked like her mom, my grandmother. And I look like my mom, and my daughter Rachael looks like me. I choose to believe that little bits of grandma are within all of us, sharing with the next generation, from generation to generation. She does indeed live on. I moved forward into the great unknown, into the world of a little one calling me Grandma. I have two little girls that call me Grandma, they belong to a young woman who used to be my step-daughter, when I was married to her father all those years ago. Gabriella and Ariana are oh so very precious to me, but my own daughter Rachael is giving me my first blood grandchild. So I step into a world where I can spoil the baby and give it back to its mother. Much like my own precious grandmother did to me. I hope to be just half the kind of grandmother that my grandmother was to me. If that happens, then my grandchildren will have a most awesome grandmother indeed. I can’t help but wonder what Rachael’s little one is going to be, what it will look like and whether or not my own grandmother will be there with me as I help Rachael bring baby into the world and help her learn how to care for it. Will she be up in heaven, helping God to know what soul to give my grandbaby? I can hope so, because she does know me so well, and through me, I know she knows my daughter as well, though she has never met her. Memories are something to hold on too, to keep in your heart forever, they are indeed, something to be treasured.
Posted on: Wed, 21 Aug 2013 21:44:58 +0000
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