Slamming of the Door, Sunday Dinners, Those Memories
My cousin reposted this on
FB the other day.
I read it and it seriously
brought tears.
Nobody tells you
when you’re a kid
that one random Sunday
at Grandma’s house will
eventually be the last time
everyone is there at the same time.
The cousins are running
in and out of the house.
Somebody’s yelling,
“STOP SLAMMING THAT DOOR!”
The adults are sitting
around the kitchen table
talking about things you
couldn’t care less about.
There’s food everywhere.
Someone is asleep
in a recliner.
You can hear the TV from
the other room.
You’re bored half the time
and begging to go home.
And you have absolutely
no idea that you are standing
inside a memory you will
spend the rest of your
life wishing you could
walk back into.
Then everybody grows up.
The cousins move away.
People get married.
Families get busy.
Grandparents get older.
The house gets sold.
Some people stop speaking.
Some people are no longer here.
And suddenly you’d
give just about anything to sit at
that kitchen table for ten
more minutes and hear everybody’s
voices coming from different rooms.
The older I get, the more I realize…
We weren’t “just going to Grandma’s house.”
We were going to the one
place where our entire family
still belonged to each other.
And somehow none of
us realized it was temporary.
If you had a house like
that growing up, you were richer than you knew.
Oh, my gosh, the memories.
Everyone at Sunday dinner at
my granny's took place when we
went to Georgia to visit.
Adults sat around the DINING
table, kitchen table would not
hold them all.
Cousins were in and out and I
remember hearing, "stop slamming
that door" so many times. It was not
just a door, it was the screen door at
the back of the house, in the dining area.
Food all over the table.
Probably someone asleep in the other
room in the recliner and the tv going,
I was not ever thinking of that.
Never wanted to leave so long
as the cousins were around.
AND
we all grew up.
Granddaddy got sick and passed.
Granny hung in till she got
Alzheimer's and went to live with
my aunt. The house was sold at
some point to the trucking company
next door.
Granny passed and my trips
to Ga. did not stop completely
but they slowed a lot.
left to right
back row~Uncle Don - gonegranny - gone
aunt Donna, aunt Martha,
uncle Paul behind them
(only three left)
and aunt Caroline -gone
Alice was not in the pic - gone
Two aunts and mom gone.
Four cousins gone.
Marriages, divorces,
births and life went on.
My favorite cousin I hung with
most all the time, Kathy, has MDA of the eyes,
and COPD. She has three great
grands. My cousin that I also hung
out a lot with, Margaret, has been married
to the same guy for 52 yrs. Her sister, Becky
lives in SC. They are two out of six,
and they have lost a brother and two
sisters. To have all those laughs
bottled that Kathy, Margaret, Becky
Becky
Margaret
and I shared.
I am feeling the pull to
drive to Cedartown Ga. and
go to the graves to put flowers
out. My mom was the one that
always did that, but years before
she passed the ride got to
hard for her. No one does it now.
I remember granny's banana sandwiches,
and choc cream pie.
I remember granddaddy's,"hey, hey, what
you got cook'in"...
What do you remember about
your grandparents and visits to
their home? Some fun, or...
events at your grandparents
that got you in
TROUBLE!?
Oh, those memories...I
can remember where all
the furniture was placed. in
each room. Strange the sort of
things you remember,
and the cousins made the visit
so much cooler.
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