For Posperity

On Sunday, while we were driving to my kids' own grandparent's house (in Orem) I thought I'd tell the boys of some of my greatest memories of Grandma Leland (after having told them about her passing, which they were pretty upset with). I realized that though they had met her and been to her home, they hadn't really heard my take on why she/it was so special to me. Afterall, she hasn't been the easiest person to communicate with since my children have been born. So once I got going, it was really hard to stop or even decide which memory or story I would tell next. When we showed up  at the house, Elliot was begging for more and I promised him I would tell him as much as I could remember and that I would write it down too. He said again today, "Mom, tell me more about Grandma's house and can we see the secret club space in the attic when we get there?" And Milo said, "I'm gonna go straight down to her basement and take a big sniff!"

These are a few of the topics I promised to cover that might also get your memories twitching:

• Summer weeks with cousins that felt like years
• The down-to-the-park adventures, complete with finding bums and breaking into churches
• Bunnies that breed like, well, rabbits in a Lowell-sized hutch
• Picking stone fruits in the tops of trees
• Making forts and jungle caves in her monkey trees and tree houses in her maples
• Jumping on the tramp and exploring the Charlie I, II and III cages
• Dogs biting thumbs off and nipping chunks from buns
• Flour fights in the creek
• Stolen metal over-sized mixing bowls to sled down the hill in the winter
• Blown-up barns, broken arms from wrestling uncles and creek-side head wounds 
• The attic filled with more treasures and troves than even a mermaid cavern can hold
• World largest selection of VHS's and animated scripture stories
• The Queen of Christmas: Santa statues, porcelain houses all lit, bows of holly and evergreen window trimming
• The Queen of Conference: the birth of the cinnamon roll, orange roll, hot chocolate, and largest batch of scrambled eggs you ever did lay eyes on
• Beach trips and camping trips galore
• Bike rides and lake side hikes
• Camping in the camper when the camper was supposedly "sealed up for winter"
• Making Slug-killing potions from all the toxic chemicals in Grandpa's garage collection
• Raiding the garden
• Slamming my head more times than I can count on the concrete patio under the hammock
• Catching grandma's cheats at Rumikub and watching her rub her buns by stretching out her pants in front of the wood stove
• Finding the endless Costco-Goodies galore hidden  away in closets, big cans and junk-drawers
• Finding useful treasures in those junk drawers!
• Crawdad fishing from paperclips, cheese, needlework thread and sticks...probably found in the junk drawers
• Leland Uncle Firework displays
• Giant Pine-cone Tree swinging
• Sleeping under heavy feather comforters and reading through (mostly looking at) endless books
• Being afraid to retrieve anything that accidently rolled under those said-beds not knowing what I'd find
• Eating the many meals made from her  hands, sometimes loving it and sometimes hating it, but most of all hating her meatloaf
• Those beloved ninja turtle costumes and stuffed purple strong man (among many others, giant Hershey kiss, etc. she made for Halloween for us grand kids)
• Eating dinner in a pumpkin on Halloween- more ground beef- BLECH!
• Loving the wide breakfast view from her kitchen table yet being terrified of what lay behind the windows at night during dinner
• Watching her do her needlework and falling in love with thread
• Loving Martha Stewart before I even knew who she was and how much there was to love of her ingenious
• Living room activities: sock puppets, plays, dance theaters and poetry readings
• The ping-pong/air-hockey set-up with the bunk bedded basement room where we'd watch cartoons to our hearts content and forced to watch "It" until our bones chattered
• The utter-unkownness of that musty dark basement room past the 30-yr old mystery-filled canning jars
• That wretched old neighbor Latham with smelly armpits
• Wetting long grasses and shocking ourselves on the horse electric fences lining her property
• Find all sorts of trouble to get into from grandma's driveway down to the Cummings
• Cobe and I's walking home route from Concord through peoples backyard, up to grandmas
• Playing Sonic the hedgehog up in the attic with all the boys
• The coveted promised gifts that she honestly worked on but never finished: porcelain dolls, needlepoint pillows, etc
•  Living with her (just me and her) for 3 summer months while working two jobs

And I do think I'll keep adding to that list and hopefully  be finding the time to expand upon them....