(The birthday cake I made her in 2006)
Friends of blog will recall that I posted pictures from Grams's birthday last year but did not do the full five-favorite birthday treatment, a fact I intend to remedy today. I have found that it is sometimes tough to write the five-favorite posts about the youngsters in my life because I've known them such a relatively short amount of time and don't have years of shared experiences and memories from which to draw. The difficulty I find with writing these posts about the adult-types in my life is that there are too many stories and characteristics, too much specialness to narrow it down to five. So my favorites may be deliberately broad here so I can cram in as much Gramsy goodness as can be managed.
(With the first 8 great-grands in 2007)
5. Most every childhood memory of my Grams is wrapped up in food. Faithful readers may recall that I have occasionally mentioned my moma's cooking as the standard for all great things in the world, and she came by that skill quite honestly. My Grams is the mastermind behind the way I think Thanksgiving dinners ought to be. Her way of cooking a roast is the best way. And though my moma cooks many things just like her, there will always be dishes that are Grams's signature dishes, things that no one can do as well as her, like baked apples (which I foolishly didn't even eat as a kid) and banana pudding and chocolate pie and fudge and Sunday night popcorn. And cornbread--I could cheerfully eat her cornbread for every meal for the remainder of my life. The summer I was learning to cook like a grown-up, I tried to get Grams to give me her recipe for deviled eggs. The only exact measurement in the whole thing was the number of eggs to use--and even that was dependent upon how many people I wanted to feed. It was years before I worked up the nerve to try and make them on my own with a little of this and just enough of that. Of course, they were nothing like as good as hers, but I'm going to keep trying. I'm sure this idea came down the generations long before my Grams entered the picture, but she's the place where I learned it: feeding someone, taking the time to prepare meals and making sure that everyone gets their favorite is one of the purest expressions of love. Food fuels the body, but my Grams's food and the memories of meals at her table (even the card table in the utility room) will feed my heart for the rest of my life.
(With my moma last summer)
4. My Grams is careful and meticulous. In this day and age, folks would look at her organized cabinets and storage solutions and mention OCD, but that's not really it. She has just always been a person who likes order and never had enough money to be wasteful. So she re-purposed things that others would discard and made lists on the insides of cabinet doors so you could find what you needed at a glance. In case you were wondering, while this is a trait that she passed down, I didn't get a drop of it. Michelle took all that organization and attention to detail and love of order and left me with the haphazard sloppiness of some other ancestor, but I can still admire the clever ways that Grams has of keeping things orderly. The one time she helped me move, I put her in charge of lining the kitchen cabinets and drawers. She measured and cut perfectly straight lines and lined everything with such precision that I was shamed into keeping everything orderly just to honor the lining. I can remember when she helped Michelle pack up to move one time, she had to clean the glass on every picture frame before wrapping it flawlessly in newspaper. The woman was born for detail work, and though I often lament that more of this trait didn't rub off on me, if I ever have a moment of ingenuity or an organizational breakthrough, it makes me feel like her girl.
(Christmas 2010)
3. My Grams is a woman of faith, and that is truly something she leaves as her legacy. My childhood memories of Grams and church are completely intertwined from her forceful, strong singing voice to her mispronunciation of Matthew to her unabashed arguments in Bible class. Her devotion to the study of Scripture has always been an example to me--and not one that I come close to living up to. If she'd been doing Project 4:4 last year, she wouldn't have quit in April. I always remember my Gramps as the spiritual leader of our family, but the truth is without Grams, he wouldn't have been. And while I sometimes think Grams and I don't see eye to eye on all things theological, she's such a huge part of why I believe at all, and her steady faith is a constant comfort to me.
(Fall 2010)
2. When my Gramps was alive, I think he overshadowed Grams a little. He was such a charmer, with such a big personality that it was easy to be drawn to him, and in my memories she was always stricter, more serious, the straight man to his comic. But they worked together as a team gloriously. Maybe it's just because I didn't know them until they'd been married for over thirty years, but the two of them fit together in a way that made perfect sense, which is not to say that they always agreed or got along perfectly. But when I think of them, I can remember how when she was exasperated, he just smiled and those blue eyes twinkled, and when he was frustrated, she soothed. Maybe that's selective memory, but that's how I want to remember them. They took care of each other in a million little ways, and so much of my idea of what marriage is supposed to look like comes from them. When I was in the fifth grade, I started riding the bus to their house in the afternoons to hang out with them until my moma got off work. When I think about them together, that's where I picture them--in the living room watching Club Dance or sitting at the kitchen table with their afternoon coffee (and if Gramps and I were lucky Twinkies), with their everyday, ordinary conversations and teasing and occasional bickering. In the fourteen years that I've gotten to know Grams without Gramps, I've come to appreciate her humor and personality a little more, but I also always think she's just a little incomplete, a little less than she was with him. That idea drives my vision of heaven as a place of reunion. I need to believe it will be for the two of them.
(A four generation pic with MacMac, CST1BF, and tiny Elijah)
1. One of my favorite things to do over the past dozen years or so is to watch Grams with our babies, the great-grands. She's got ten at the moment with number eleven due to arrive in November, and she adores those babies. Seeing her dote and laugh and fuss and fill up with pride over these kiddos gives me flashes of my own childhood, and I know that she doted and laughed and fussed and burst with pride over me (and the other seven grands) just as she does for them. It's the same kind of love she has for her three girls, and it's the basis for all the love that we all give back to her. It's continuity, linking us to the past and stretching us into the future, a love that will outlive her and someday me. It's a love that is making this last long good-bye the easiest thing to do and the hardest, both triumphant and heart-breaking.
Happy Birthday, Grams!
several years ago, I've known that FHDM is a funny guy. And I've known for way longer than that, that I prefer to be around people who amuse me. But when reading his blog last week, I realized why he's the perfect kind of funny. FHDM wrote a 
. ****
(except for the part where I told you how behind I am), and I read some picture books in storytimes a couple weeks ago.
: Go ahead and mock. Laugh your fill. My feelings will not be hurt. Let me tell you, imaginary reader, about young Ellen. She didn't like to read, and in her elementary school she went to the library with her class every third day and was expected to check out a book. This did not please young Ellen. So after she read all the Garfield books that were in her school library, she was forced to read books with actual words and such. One day, someone, probably her sweet-voiced school librarian Mrs. Beck, put Kristy's Great 
Idea into her third-grade hands. And the rest is history. Today old Ellen works in a library, has a useless degree in English, and has a relationship with words that began right there, in that third floor school library with Ann M. Martin and the girls of the BSC.
I can't remember exactly when I read this book for the first time, but I think it was in the neighborhood of sixth or seventh grade. I'd seen the miniseries a couple years earlier and loved the story and characters already. But this reading experience taught me that the book is always better than the movie, and with very few exceptions, that's a lesson that has stood the test of time. It's hilarious and sad, full of horses and cattle and cowboy goodness, life and death, snakes and Indians and guns, and characters that will always live for me. I will say that though the miniseries has its share of grit, it's still something that was made for tv in the 80s. The book itself is grittier, more vulgar, more real, perhaps more than my twelve-year-old self was strictly ready for. But in addition to garnering more knowledge about late 19th century western whoring (yes, I just said whoring, hope you weren't letting your kids read the blog) than a seventh grade girl probably needs, I really think this was the first book that showed me how deeply I could be moved by characters, that I could feel their joys and suffer their losses and care so completely about words on paper. My love for this epic story that has survived several re-readings and about eighteen years. Lonesome Dove also had the distinction for a year or so of being the longest book I had read at 969 pages. But I read my moma's copy of 
in seventh or eighth grade, which is lovely 1037 pages, but I don't think it's making the list here. Consider this sentence its honorable mention.
Daring to Dance with God
From 1992-1996, I went to Uplift, a church camp at Harding with Robyn and sometimes some other folks. For most (all?) of those years, Jeff Walling was a featured speaker. We were and are fans. The year this book came out , he talked about some of the ideas from the book at Uplift. And he signed copies, so of course, we bought them. This is maybe the first book about being a Christian I ever read (not counting the Bible), and it was a huge and important deal in my life. There are phrases and images that still come to me that I first encountered through Jeff Walling. And though I didn't learn this from the book, Jeff Walling is solely responsible for teaching me the Beatitudes in the right order. 
Harry Potter
I would like to be able to tell you that I was with Harry Potter before he was cool. My dearest wish is to say that I read the first book in 1998 (or even better the British version in 1997) and had a hand in spreading the gospel of HP from the beginning. It would thrill my soul to not be a bandwagon jumper. But, alas, in truth, I never intended to read the books. Ever. In my defense, I was in college when the first books were released, and I wasn't reading much children's lit. I also frequently proclaim that I don't like fantasy. So though I had some friends who were ahead of the trend and reading them, I was staunchly opposed for a long time. But in 2001, the first movie was released, and in the time leading up to it, lots and lots of my friends were hyped up, and my resistance was wearing down. I knew, based on the hype, I wouldn't be able to live in the world and not be bombarded with spoilers, so if I was ever going to read them, the time was now (uhh . . . then). So I read the first four books in a ridiculously short amount of time, and it changed my life. The story consumed me. I love a big story, and I love meaty characters. And though it made me insane, I loved the anticipation of waiting for the end of the story. I was terrified of 
because there was so much riding on the ending, for me. I had six years wrapped up in this world, and it could have been heart-breaking. And it was, in some ways, but it was also very right for me, in most ways. It was always going to be hard to get to the end, and I knew that beloved characters would have to die. But overall, I'm satisfied with the ending. I reread (and relisten to) the entire series on a regular basis.
Pride and Prejudice
Sadly, I can't remember the first time I read P& P, but it was either high school or college. I had seen and loved the BBC miniseries version (the Colin Firth one) and based on the recommendations of book folk that I trust, I read it. And it's lovely. The language is so dense and formal that it creates a reading experience very unlike a lot that I read. I've read all the other Austens (I think) too, but P&P remains my favorite. I love Elizabeth Bennett, but who doesn't? All of the sequels, spin-offs, or retoolings of the book are a testament to its quality. The number of people who feel such an attachment to this story that they need to write a companion to it, is somewhat staggering to me, but clearly there's an audience for them or they wouldn't get published at such an alarming rate. I'll admit that I've read several of the knock-offs through various stages of my Jane Austen obsession, but 
is definitely my favorite of these and one of the few that can stand on its own. Some of them are pretty horrific, especially the ones that are sequels. It's a dangerous thing to mess with the lives of beloved characters, and you better have your history and style down if you're going to attempt period fiction. But the point I'm trying to make is Pride and Prejudice is awesome. It fills my soul.
) the summer of 2002 when I was teaching two sessions of summer school. The young miscreants under my tutelage were supposed to spend a certain amount of time reading, and I decided to model good reading skills for them, so I borrowed this book from the junior high library. As it turns out, it wasn't a great book for modeling sustained, silent reading because I couldn't read it silently. I guffawed, loudly, lots--an embarrassing amount, actually. Then I got Robyn to read it, and Hailey and Mo have read it too. It's forged a bond amongst us all. The main character Georgia is a British teenager, who tells the story through her diary. It's hilarious and crazy, with addictive catch-phrases and a glossary, that is allegedly supposed to decipher all the British-isms for the American readers. There are ten books in the series, and it's nonstop fun. It'll have you laughing like a loon on loon tablets, like a laughing loon from Loonland. It's as funny as three funny things. Plus it'll help decipher the nonsense that I say. 
Anne of Green Gables
Oh, how I love these books. I've been reading and rereading them for years, and they still have the power to make me laugh and cry and get wrapped up in the world of Prince Edward Island. In general, I'm a huge fan of series of books. I tend to get immersed in stories and attached to characters, and if there are multiple books in which I can delve into that world and meet up with those characters, so much the better. One of the things I love about Anne and Marilla and Matthew and Gilbert and everyone else here is that at the heart, the characters are all so good. Just good, kind people, and though spite and malice and hardship come to call, the goodness of these characters I love shines through. It's a balm to my soul. The later books focus on Anne and Gil's kids, and they are just as delightful and funny and kind and likely to get into scrapes as Anne herself. Oh, how I love them all.
On Beyond Zebra
This is another book with an Uplift connection. We went to a class one year called "On Beyond Zebra." I think we picked the class because the title amused us--that's how we usually picked. Until about two minutes ago, I was completely confident I knew the name of the guy that taught it, but now I'm feeling uncertain. I think it was Mark Miller. Robyn will correct me if it wasn't him. Anyway he used this lesser-known Dr. Seuss book as a jumping off point for the class, where we talked about going beyond the ordinary and stuff. It was a really cool class, and I've had a special love for the book ever since. Plus Dr. Seuss is awesome. Besides being a big bunch of fun to read, there are some pretty interesting themes in a lot of his books. There's a really empowering message here about not accepting easy answers.
There was a span of about six years when I was a faithful Entertainment Weekly subscriber. As such, I felt very strongly that it was important to get my money's worth by reading the magazine from cover to cover. That was my first experience with influential book reviews. I was influenced by other EW reviews and features also, but once I started working at a bookstore and the library, I went on a mission to read any book whose review intrigued me. And that's how I met this book, back in 2003. The narrator is a British teenager with autism who solves mysteries, sorta. It wouldn't matter what Christopher (the main character) was up to in this story, because how it's told is so much more important than what's told, in this case. It was a book unlike anything I'd read before. Talking about it has made me want to reread it so much, which is one of the highest compliments I can give a book.