But...reading on Mary's blog, there is a meme (rhymes with 'cream') where someone selects the number of a folder and picture (like your third folder, 25th picture). You, in turn, find the 25th picture in your 3rd folder, share it, and explain. So that sounded fun, and will provide a much-needed visual for this blog. :-) (I didn't have 25 pictures in the folder, but this is one of the last ones, and it had "25" in the picture number....for what that's worth.)
So.... are you ready?? Kind of anti-climatic, eh?
My grandfather and grandmother were married for over 50 years. My grandmother was a wonderful, generous, hard-working person, but also rather controlling. For most of our growing-up years, they lived in New Jersey, and we live in the deep South so we saw each other once a year on the average. Taxes in New Jersey being what they are, my grandparents retired and moved to my hometown when I was in high school.
My grandmother passed away in 1990 or so (numbers just blend together since I've had children) and my grandfather was in his early-mid 70's. It was early in my teaching career. About a year or so later, he married Bessie. Bessie had been a widow for a long time, never had any children of her own, was still working at an upscale department store in women's clothing, was about 80, and had flaming red hair. She told us from the beginning that she didn't want to take our grandmother's place, but she was such a gentle soul that that was never an issue. She loved us and we loved her. She never meddled. She never nagged. She just loved. When my first child was born a few years later, she bought him several beautiful "outfits" from the store that she had recently retired from. She is the great-grandmother that my children remember the most.
This was one of the outfits. It was a little romper thingy. But white and my children never mixed, so it was never worn. I kept it in the closet, with the tags still attached while all of the other outgrown stuff found other homes and other children. Fast forward about 13 years. Bessie had passed away a few years before (in her 90's with her hair still red). My sister had had her first child and was looking for something for him to wear for his baptism. I mentioned this garment to her and had taken some pictures to email to her for her approval. This was one of those pictures. Notice the dates. We weren't waiting until the last minute or anything? (Kind of runs in the family...)
Here my little godchild spends some quality time with his great-grandfather after his baptism. Bessie was there with us that day, too.
And so this is long enough for a post. I had started another one that amounted to "tales from the confessional and other assorted ramblings" and had thought I'd just put the photo roulette in front of it, but I think I will cut and paste that into another post for now. Stay tuned....
Oh yeah - if you want to join in, visit Cara at Mischief and Laughs and play along.
What a great story about the picture! I finally remembered to participate in the meme...I think it's a good one!
ReplyDelete