She smelled like Coty face powder and she was our safe haven every summer.
We called her MaMaw. Sound a little country? It was a beautiful word to the four of us!
She wasn't even my grandma~she was my brothers' grandma, the mother of their mother, who died at 26 in a head-on collision on December 26, 1966. My dad and my two brothers, 5 and 11 months, survived the wreck with multiple injuries.
I was born almost five years later, a little over seven months after my parents' marriage. I don't remember how it all started, how my older sister and I became included in the plans, but I do remember the charged anticipation of spending two weeks with MaMaw and PaPaw every summer.
Mason jars of bread and butter pickles and okra
When I picture my grandma, I see her resting against the kitchen sink, eating a garden tomato as if it were an apple, while she watched the neighborhood through the window. Sometimes it would be a slice of watermelon, sprinkled with salt~she was a country girl!
Dinners were huge--meat (oh, the chicken fried steak!), four to five side dishes, some kind of bread and sweetened iced tea. Seconds? Of course! Thirds? Sure! Do you want some more? 
And I think about all of the food that she made for one meal and all of the serving bowls~and she cleaned everything while we ran off to watch television.
Malted milk, ice cream, Dr. Pepper
We used to say that MaMaw was the perfect grandma because she was chubby, we could hug and cuddle with her all day if we wanted, and she spoiled us rotten (and we took full advantage!).
She and PaPaw had an extra freezer in the garage, and that is where we would head every night to pick out a rectangular cardboard box of ice cream. She usually kept it stocked with about three flavors~if I remember correctly, we could expect to find Neapolitan, cookies and cream, and chocolate chip. We ate ice cream every night! Big bowls piled with scoops of ice cream, Dr. Pepper floats, or malts (Carnation malted was a staple in her cupboard!).
We played dominoes for hours at her kitchen table~and we loved that she played with us!
Christmas trees with blue lights and blue ornaments
MaMaw was the epitome of patience and tolerance! My sister and I gave our grandparents four flat tires on their new car, because we thought we would play a "trick" on the neighborhood boys by standing nails up in the driveway (we wanted to flatten the tires on their bikes). Only, we ran off to play somewhere else and forgot to pick up the nails before PaPaw pulled in the driveway...
One summer, in an act of budding female liberation, my sister and I decided that if the boys could go outside without their shirts, so could we! And we spent a day playing in the neighborhood with no shirts (we might have been 7 and 9 at the time). At first, MaMaw tried to talk us into putting our shirts back on, but eventually gave up. We were bored with it after one day and wore shirts the rest of our visit. (We would have never attempted this at our house~but MaMaw wasn't a disciplinarian and we knew we could get away with pretty much anything over there!).
Porch swings, gardens, catfish ponds
I always felt like MaMaw lived in the moment with the four of us. If we were swimming, bowling, skating, or cuddling on the porch swing in the evenings, she was with us, watching us. But, as an adult, I wonder if she wasn't watching my brothers, looking for glimpses of her beautiful daughter in them.
What a woman, to lose her only daughter and then to embrace two little girls as granddaughters, treating them with love and kindness...if she favored my brothers, I never saw it. I wish I had known her as an adult. If I had, I would have apologized for those days when I was unruly, cleaned that kitchen for her, and enjoyed a glass of iced tea on the porch swing with her, as we looked out over her garden.
Play group...haven't been in a very long time. But, it's the best environment for my two- and four-year olds--it's in a big room at the church. It's contained and easy to keep track of them, but it is boring for my oldest...
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I'm just going to throw it out there. One hundred pounds. Me. Over my "ideal" weight. Ugh. It just looks so ugly in these cold, pink alphabetical letters. 
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