Reminiscing

I've been thinking about my grandparents. I hardly ever [if ever] ate a dinner at their house where the table wasn't set. And I ate a lot of dinners there. I pride myself in knowing how to set a table properly. It's ingrained in me. I appreciate them for that. I don't think we ever ate buffet style either. The food was on the table. Last night, I made an old standard, enchiladas, but Cora and I set the table, and brought all of the food from the kitchen to the dining room. There was something so lovely about it.

I loved it when my grandma made pancakes. She followed the standard recipe using Bisquick. They were the best pancakes in the world. My favorite breakfast was pancakes with scrabbled eggs and sausage - the eggs were scrambled in with the sausage. And when the syrup mixed in with all of it. Wow. If there were left overs, which there always were, my grandpa and I would go out into the back yard, tear the pancakes into bite sized pieces and throw them to the birds. We'd watch the birds come and eat our offerings. He also did this with any left over bread.

They taught me that you could make something out of nothing. When I ran out of glue for a school project in elementary school, I learned that flour and water together make paste, and it's just as good as glue. I made a shoelace clamp-a-mid in fourth grade [to keep your shoelaces tied] for an invention fair from things I found in their shed, or "dryer room" as Grammy called it. Some old paneling, scotch tape, rubber cement, and voilà. I can't remember if I did the cutting or Grandpa did, but he was out there with me giving me direction when he thought I needed it. My invention made the Mesa Tribune. I remember wondering if my biological father, Lance, saw it, and if he would know it was me. [Random tie in.] Grandpa read the paper every day, and was the one who spotted it. I would have given Irl and Betty Lund credit for helping that brilliant idea come to fruition.

Sometimes I miss those times. I love my grandparents. My grandpa passed away in 2001. My grammy is 87 and will be 88 on April 25th. They taught me about simplicity. I don't need a lot. I know that, I'm happy for that, and I'm so glad they're the ones who shared it with me - even if I'm sure they spent much of their lives wishing they had more.

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