My Grandmother's Yard

I'm not usually big on nostalgia but I'm feeling it today. I've watched several (Season 5) episodes of Mad Men this afternoon, so that may have been some of the inspiration for my sudden surge of memories, but I think it was more the feel of the warm breeze as I stood on my back porch this evening. When I was very little, I used to spend as much time as I could at my maternal grandmother's house. I remember so many wonderful things from that time. I never wanted to go home! I gained a love of cooking and crafting, especially crochet. She let me work at her side and watch everything she did -- and she did everything. In those days I guess she was about the age I am now. I remember crawling around with her on the ground to pull weeds from the chain-link fence and using pruners that were way sharper than I should have been allowed to handle to prune the roses. I loved how the roses grew through the fence, every few feet a different color.

Of all the plants in my grandmother's yard, I loved the cherry blossom trees the most. She let me pull down all the blossoms to make a quilt of puffy pink in the yard, and I could spend hours lying on it, staring up at the sky. It didn't occur to me until I was much older how long it must have taken her to clean up that mess after I had gone home. She did all her own landscaping and gardening; paying someone to do it never would have occurred to her. Unfortunately I didn't inherit her green thumb. However, her sense of independence did rub off on me. I hate to pay anyone to do something I can do myself, although I am the first to admit I can't do all the things my grandmother could. She was both industrious and creative.

On hot summer nights, my grandmother and I sat on her front stoop, watching the neighbors and the trees and the stars -- whatever caught our interest. We'd talk during those sits, sometimes about important things, sometimes not. And when it was time for bed, we would lie with our heads at the foot of the bed to catch the night air coming through the window. I always thought this was funny and called it "sleeping upside down." My grandmother had a guest room, but usually I preferred to sleep with her. She was always up before me the next morning, and if she wasn't in the kitchen I knew where to find her: out in the yard pruning the roses or just having coffee on the stoop, enjoying the fruits of her labor.