Well, here it comes...that time of year when the house has to be rearranged, trees put up, and lights and ornamants dangle everywhere. For me, it's a time of cleaning and "doing away with" the old stuff that no one needs anymore. Today I've thrown away broken toys, parts of Mr. Potato Head that no longer had a head to attach to, single shoes, and one grass hula skirt...I don't know WHERE it came from, but it doesn't live here anymore!
Vicki and Grace spent the night with us Friday night. Vicki was going shopping with family early Saturday and Grace would spend the day with us. So this morning, smack dab in the middle of an all out cleaning, rearranging, pulling stuff out of the closet fit, I stopped to make up the bed they slept on...Pigo and Granny's bed, dressed in Mammaw and Pawpaw's sheets. What a very old bed it is, solid wooden posts with steel rails. And those sheets!! Soft as a fine linen handkerchief...
I could not help but stop and think about my grandparents. On both sides, I had such good examples and such fun grandparents. Pigo loved Christmas better than anyone I know. He absolutely could NOT wait...every year he slipped up and showed us a little something we would be seeing again at Christmas. Then Granny would catch him. "Now, William," she would say, "you don't want to spoil the surprise!" Bless his heart, he just couldn't help himself.
Christmas at Mammaw's was always on Christmas Day at lunch. I wish my children could remember more about Pawpaw, but he died when they were so little. Robert was not quite one year old. Josh and Lauren can remember "the man who fed us apples," but not much more. Mammaw always had a huge meal at her house. Her dumplings were absolutely manna from heaven. Oh, my gosh...they would melt in my mouth! She always did the shopping, and Pawpaw gave us his own gift. I remember like it was yesterday how all the grandkids would line up, single file, for him to give us a very impressive-looking Christmas money envelope. In a family were allowances were not the norm, the money we got for Christmas made us feel like millionaires. I always had such big dreams of what I was going to do with my Christmas money.
I truly cherish the memories of Christmases past; hopefully, my own children have already stored up memories of Christmases with their grandparents and us. I'm making it a special goal this year to celebrate thankfully and make memories with my kids and babies. Who knows...maybe one day in the middle of a cleaning spree, one of them will notice something old, and it will bring back wonderful memories.
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