I must have walked ten million miles 

Must have walked ten million miles

Wore some shoes that weren't my style

Fell into the rank and file

So just say I was here a while

Ten million miles    -Patty Griffin

Today was Grandparent's Day at Helena Park Elementary. Maybe that's why I woke up thinking about my Granny's cotton. Here's a picture of it. 

These are two of many pieces she picked in her lifetime. They were a fixture in her car. Riding with her you'd always see them hanging from her rear view mirror. They were there as a reminder, she said, of hard work. 
She didn't complain or tell me a sad story. She only told me when I asked as a young girl why she had cotton on her mirror.  She only needed to tell me once. Her life would spin a story that words couldn't tell. 

 I interviewed her during high school about her life during the Great Depression. Regretfully I don't have the paper I wrote. I know she answered questions I had about the difficulties of that time, but the only thing I can remember is her telling me about a time she got to go to the movies. She stressed the good parts of life. 

She raised five children and thought each one was near perfect. My dad said he wasn't. 

That I'm aware of, she never had a new house or a new car.  Moving from town to town to another house in need of repair was a way of life for her while raising kids. 

She spoiled us grandkids with Campbell's ABC soup, sugar and butter bread, and vegetables cooked in bacon grease. At night she let us crawl up in bed with her and scratched our backs until she grew too sleepy. Then she threatened that if we didn't stop talking she'd send us to sleep by ourselves in the living room where some of us had decided a witch lived in the chimney. 

I don't remember a time when my Granny could take deep breaths. Her lungs were weak for as long as I can remember. She was in the hospital more times than I can count. 
Her life wasn't easy, but trouble wasn't the essence of her story. 

It was her remembrance of the good in the midst of the terrible. It was her way of taking off-brand cans of mixed vegetables and cooking up something wonderful. 

...It was the way, when her memory was failing her, that she'd write the grandkids' and greats' names on a spiral notebook over and over so that she'd remember. 

It was her keeping her purse at the foot of the hospital bed that contained a tube of lipstick she'd bought at the pharmacy. She was never without her purse or her lipstick. She was beautiful and strong even when she was frail. 

It was all this and her wearing a scarf and long sleeves to cover up her bruised and aged skin that made it matter so much what was underneath. 

The stories lived will be remembered more than the stories told. 

Thank you God for Granny. 

Thank you for the stories of grandparents. Thank you that their past has the power to beautifully shape our future. 

For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us...Romans 15:4

May we give back to them the gift of our presence.