Special Women #7

Nothing like waiting until the last minute to finish the challenge....

Is there a woman...

Who you wish was still here with you?

I think I waited to do this one last because I knew I'd get all emotional and sappy. I wish that GRANNY was still here with me.

I'm so lucky that my maternal grandmother, better known as Granny, was in my life until I was well into my forties. Bless her heart, she lived to the ripe old age of 94! All I can say is that I hope in the great gene pool of life, I inherited those long-life genes from her!

She was a simple woman, never wanted much but to be happy and have her family be happy. She raised three daughters on her own, sending them to private school while she worked as the head seamstress in a local boys' orphanage. Her house was a small, 3-room shotgun (in New Orleans, shotgun houses are long and narrow, with one room behind the other - you can shoot a shotgun in the front door and the bullet will go right out of the back door, so the story goes) but it was a home, filled with love, happiness and lots of good cooking.

Oh, yes, being of French Cajun descent, Granny was a helluva cook. Gumbo. Jambalaya. Biscuits. Seafood. Red Beans. You name it, she could probably cook it. And she always cooked for an army, even when it was just a couple of us going over to her house to eat with her.

Our family was small compared to some. When we were all younger, there were always 12 of us gathered in her tiny kitchen for Thanksgiving and Christmas: Granny, Aunt Loretta; Mom, Dad, me and Jamie; Aunt Janet and Uncle Jerry, Lonnie and Susie; and always present, Auntie and Uncle Jr. (Granny's sister Bernice and her husband, Junius). Good thing there were no more grandkids - I don't think they would have fit!

She lived in her little house until 1989, when she moved into an apartment in a Senior-Retirement community. It was a small, studio apartment on the 9th floor, where she lived on her own just about until the day she departed this Earth. She continued to cook and play bingo and would hop in anybody's car that was heading to a casino. She could sit for hours upon hours playing video poker. And she was good at it!

The older I got, the closer I got to Granny. When I decided to move to California, I was afraid to tell her, but when I did, she didn't give me grief. All she said to me was "Cher, go and live your life and have a good time. And call me every once in a while." That call became a once-a-week event that we both looked forward to. At first, I'd call her on Thursday nights, because she said there wasn't anything on tv to watch. Then, as she got older and went to bed earlier, I switched to Sunday evenings after she returned from the local bingo game. We'd stay on the phone sometimes for over an hour, even though she'd tell me how much she hated to talk on the phone. We would laugh and giggle like a couple of twelve year olds and she'd make jokes about the "old people" that lived in her apartment complex. One day, I pointed out to her that she was probably one of the oldest living there and she just said "yeah, and I'm probably the ugliest. So what?" Her quick-witted humor was very unique.

Granny always kept a spotless, clean, very neat home. That was something I always admired, and it's something that I didn't inherit from her (or my Mom!). She'd always tell me "Kel, find your courage and do your work." Hmph. I'm still looking for my courage after all these years.

I miss Granny so much, but feel so lucky that this special woman was a part of my life for so long. I think of her every day and sometimes get a chuckle when something she said crosses my mind, especially if it relates to something someone else says or does in my presence.

Gran, if I had a glass of Anisette, I'd raise it to you right now!

Until Next Time,

Kel