One Book, One Bettendorf

This I believe…..

Relationships create our being. We form opinions about ourselves through the reflections in others’ eyes. I learned survival from my grandmother and unconditional positive regard. She taught me that I am loving, loveable, entertaining and very OK. Whenever I smell anything resembling lye soap I think of her.

When I look at the thinning skin on my thinning hands and see the beginning of brown spots I think of her. She was my first friend. I loved the me that I saw in her eyes. I was not a skinny little girl with bird legs. I was whole. I was not a curly haired little girl in a straight haired world. I was not left-handed in a right handed world. I was not an only-lonely child. I had a companion.

I was a worrier and she was a soother. I worried about storm clouds and head aches and cancer. She always said it would be OK.

I roamed fields as a young child seemingly free from concerns of the greater world. But even when fishing at the pond in the back pasture I hated killing the fish and wondered how badly the hook hurt before we hit them with the pliers to relieve them of their misery, and if God were there to meet them on the other side — I mean heaven. Grandma said, “Probably.”

We could hear cows bawling at night after their calves were weaned from them. They seemed to be dying of broken hearts. I asked Grandma how we could comfort the cows, and she said it would be “all right”. Most things would be “all right.”

She knew how to do everything. She made her clothes, lye soap, quilts, cheese and the best strawberry jam ever. We would lay on the grass and point out animals we saw in clouds. She never laughed at me, she thought I was special. Remember the skinny legs? She had ‘em, too.

She only wore dresses, until one day. We got ready to go to the timber to hunt hickory nuts, and it was cold, a pretty crisp fall day. We got my dad’s coveralls for her to wear over her flowered dress, cotton stockings and black heels. It was a hoot. She had never worn trousers of any kind. We took pictures and she hid her face. We showed the pictures to everyone.

These are precious memories, and I wonder how I can create memories for my grandsons. It takes imagination. They live many miles from me, so visits aren’t frequent. I make the most of those visits. We read lots of books, crawl around under tables, build forts and ride cable cars and ponies. I love them in an active way and give myself to them. I hope that works.

Pat Kirkland

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 19th, 2008 at 7:44 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.