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Choose one Challenge Memory for each grandparent that you remember.
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I loved visiting Grandma and Pop by myself. One day I was “helping” her in the garden and I started musing about whether you could grow pinks in the crotch of a tree… and she planted them! And they thrived!
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One Christmas Pop gave teenage Susan and me bottles of perfume. Mine was L'Heure Bleue. Pop was a man who cared about quality, who researched and selected things that were quietly fine. I wore this scent for years, and my “Secret Admirer” gave me a bottle a few years ago for Christmas. (Unfortunately, I was reading while I reached for something in the cupboard and knocked the half-full bottle off the shelf. But my bathroom smelled marvelous for a very long time.)
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One summer I visited Grandpa Doctor by myself. (In his town, Harmony, everyone called him “Doc” so we kind of incorporated Doc into the name we gave him.) One evening I was on the floor, drawing on paper from a roll he kept in his office to wrap medicine samples. He was reading in his recliner while listening to KDKA radio. They had a quiz about American royalty, and he knew the answer was Queen Lili`uokalani and let me call the station over and over. I didn’t get through until someone else won the prize, but it was fun to try. (He had visited Hawaii with one of his brothers. I still have a sandalwood fan he brought back for me.)
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A few years ago we had a sort of family reunion in Harmony. We placed leis on the bust of him in the town diamond. He would have approved of the leis, but the townsfolk didn't understand. The leis were gone by morning. |
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Great Grandma Hardie lived in a stone and brick house on, I think partially in, a hillside in Swampoodle, outside Harmony. One summer while I was visiting Grandpa Doctor, I walked out to see her every day. She died not long after, and I remember how glad I was that I had spent time with her in her home.
Years later we visited her deserted house and the coolness, the darkness, and the scents took me back. There were still lilacs and peonies blooming outside. These photos are from that day. |
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Grandma Hardie
holding me. |
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