My children call her Gigi (aka my Grammie)

This is my Grammie.

She will be 97 years young this month. (update 98! this year)

I don’t know how I’m going to write this post.

I’m already fighting back tears.

Pause please.

Okay.

I think about her daily, rx my thoughts are sweet, capsule they put a smile on my face.

She raised my Mom and they both have been the most influential women in my life.

To share with you a glimpse of who my Grammie is:

Her home is a delicious place for your senses, it always has been.

She gave me hot baths and wrapped me in warmed fluffy soft towels as a child.

At each visit she named each and every perfume on her sterling silver tray as I smelled them one by one.

Then asked which one I liked the very best.

She taught me to cook, stuffed mushrooms with garlic at 9;  she had ultimate patience.

I have always felt she has understood that life is about the ride and not just the destination.

We picked the grapes she grew and made red wine together.

She still has a bottle from that very day and it’s the most amazing Port.

We canned almost every fruit and/or vegetable picked from her oversized garden.

We turned cucumbers into pickles,

pureed boiled tomatoes through a fine sieve into sauce, and made outrageous strawberry jam.

I still escape into the memory of the sweet smell of her basement and garage.

It was always clean – earthy – Grammie.

One more thing,

I have always connected her rings to her hands; hands that picked fruit, washed dishes, cooked meals with me beside her. They also are the hands that held and rubbed my back while my head rested in her lap. I still sneak the opportunity to lay my head in her lap each time I see her.

For one more embrace, one more ounce of sage advice, one more laugh, one more golden moment in time with her.

I couldn’t possibly love a person more.

Here comes the tears again.

Please pause.

But above all of these things, foremost.

She is a lady.

More about her tomorrow.

Click HERE to read part two.