Monday, April 21, 2008

Memories

One month from yesterday I will be another year older. I've become a tad nostalgic lately and got to thinking about some of my favorite memories. One of my favorite memories of all time are my BIRTHDAYS! I was born on my grandma's birthday. She had over 40 grandchildren, but I always knew I was her special one because our birthdays were on the same day. She always called me her brown eyed darling. Grandma never had any money to spare, but for my birthday she and I would take the bus downtown to the Woolworth store and sit at the counter, sharing a scrumptious banana split. It wasn't until I was much older that I wondered where she ever found the money for those banana splits. I don't remember ever getting a material gift from her. She was her gift to me.

Grandma passed away over 30 years ago. For quite a few years after she died, I would cry on my birthday and refuse to celebrate. I missed her so much on that special day. Then one year I finally realized I needed to celebrate as if she was still with me - and I do! Grandma was a very special lady. She raised 8 children, mostly on her own, since my grandpa was quite a bit older than her and died when some of the children were still young. As you can see from the picture, she was a tiny lady, barely 5 feet tall. Funny how such a little lady could have such power over me. She was the one person I never wanted to dissapoint. As far as I know, I never did.

5 comments:

Intense Guy said...

Aww, that's a precious picture and an even more precious memory. :)

To me, raising eight children sounds exhausting even with help, so she must of had some hard learned secrets that smoothed things a little.

Thanks for sharing this - I hope you have a big ol' scrumptious 'nanna split this year - my treat!

I'm a little envious actually, my grandma always had a plain hotdog at Woolworths, saying, "Oh, they do a good hotdog!" afterwards.

AliceKay said...

I posted a comment but I got an error and it disappeared on me. I'll wait to see if it shows up before re-posting my comment a second time. *sighs*

LadyStyx said...

What a beautiful picture of the two of you. What an awesome woman to rear a family of 8. My mom's mom is the one that raised the big family. She , too, raised 8 children...my mom being the next to last child. There's enough of an age difference that a couple of my uncles could reasonably pass as my grandparent while grama could easily be my great grandma. She's got great great great(?) grandchildren now. I'll be doing a post on her and grampa sometime this week. More old photos. I just gotta decide which ones I wanna use.

sexy41 said...

Happy Birthday to you Punkn. That is a beautiful picture of the two of you. Thank you for sharing the heart warming story between you two.

Hugs

ChicagoLady said...

I always love hearing about special memories people have of family members. Those are the things in life that need to be treasured the most.