My Grandma is an amazing woman and still spry for someone in her late eighties. She still runs around, attends weddings, tells jokes, gets up and dances.
When Meatloaf’s Two Out of Three Ain’t Bad comes on, she sings to it and goes nuts. With twelve kids, close to thirty grandkids and many more great grandkids, she somehow manages to remember everyone’s birthday with a card.
I love listening to all her stories and some of them are so funny I laugh so hard there are tears in my eyes. One of her stories includes how they had to hide the moonshine before the priest got there.
She says to me, “Sandy, why are we so tough?” and it always makes me smile. I just say, “I don’t know Grandma.”
Sometimes she watches the Sopranos and plays dumb so she asks me, “Sandy, is Tony a bad man?” knowing very well he is. She does that when trying to get more information about people too. Sometimes I wonder if she does it just to get us going. She will ask about someone everyone knows is usually unemployed, “Is he a hard worker?”
If someone in the family does something wrong, she will reassure us that “he didn’t mean no harm.” It wouldn’t matter the crime.
Once I asked her for her bread recipe and she couldn’t give it to me even though she used to make it every day. She just keeps adding stuff until it feels right.
She loves my husband and her perception of him is that he is a kind, gentle well-mannered man who speaks softly. This is amusing because although he is kind, he can be quite loud but at least he behaves around her.
When my Grandpa was alive sometimes he would get going, exaggerate things after a few beer, and say, “am I right or wrong?” to my Grandma. She just said, “Well, it could have happened that way.”
My dad was a lot like her and so was very tactful. When I was little he used to practice with his band in my grandparent’s basement and I have fond memories of us dancing there. I have been thinking about him quite a bit lately and I think it’s the weather because he would always be out scouting for stuff at garage sales about now. He didn’t always get himself something but he usually found everyone else a treasure.
My Grandma truly never has a bad word to say about anyone and I wish I saw her more because you can’t help but feel good when you’re around her. I tried to call her but she must be out on the town with one of her many friends.
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