Grandma Wilson

I have no pictures of me and my Grandma Wilson. I have one or two of her, when she came to visit me about 11 years ago. Unhappily, my scanner is broke beyond repair and so I cannot post them.
I so loved my Grandma Wilson. And, as I look back, I know she loved me too. Her daughter, my aunt Mary Ellen, was just two years old when I was born. My grandma made several beautiful , identical dresses that I remember for Mary Ellen and me. I thought Mary Ellen was just the greatest, so I was more than happy to wear identical clothes :)
Here are the things I remember about going to /staying with my grandma:.
She always had these things in her cupboard/refrigerator:
*PDQ (chocolate beads that you stir in your milk to make chocolate milk)
*Packets of Mix and Eat Cream of Wheat (my mom NEVER bought these!)
*A Copper Cookie Jar/Tin full of Oreos
*Popsicles (she did not even break them in half, she always let me have a double!)
*Lipton Instant Sweetened w/Lemon Ice Tea (and plus the very LONG handled Tupperware tea spoons!)

She had blankets to use outside that she kept in her garage (to this day I LOVE the smell of a garage)
There was a wagon that I rode in while Mary Ellen pulled me waaaaay down the hill to the park(a full block away from Grandma's, the hill more a slope that I might not even notice now... seemed like a mile when I was little)
There were three GIANT spruce trees on the NE corner of Grandma and Grandpa's house. We (my brother Tom and sister Karen) pretended our house was in there, underneath the branches of these three big trees.
I learned to play Croquet at my grandma's.
I had lunch and supper uncountable times on my Grandma and Grandpa's screen porch. Oh I loved it out there. I am so very blessed to have those fabulous venetian crank out windows in my house now, along with the cedar tongue and groove paneling from the same screen porch. The wonderful old guy I am married to went down with a U-haul trailer when my dad remodeled my grandma's house. He brought all those windows back to our loghomeupnorth and made me a to die for screen porch. We can watch eagles, swans, ducks, geese and sandhill cranes land right in our back yards, through these very same windows.
I could go on and on with wonderful memories of my grandma. My grandpa was there, too, of course, but my grandma is the one who made me feel oh so loved.
There was an awful time, when my dad was deciding he did not want us for his family anymore. I was a grown woman then; my husband was in his vicarage year of seminary. I was a mommy with two little kids. I was so very mixed up when my dad left our family that I turned my back on my grandma, my Aunt Mary Ellen, and everything that had to do with that side of my family. I so wrongly wanted nothing to do with my father and felt totally uncomfortable "fraternizing" with those who were related to the person who hurt my mom so badly....
Oh my how I wish I knew then what I know now.
When I finally realized, after my mom died, how much my grandma meant to me, I went to her house (the address and phone number of which are engraved on my memory forever)... I knocked on the door that I have known since I first have memories (painted green then, but it was chocolate colored when I was a kid). My grandma came to the door and after recovering from shock and surprise said, (I will never ever forget her voice and words) "LINDA! Oh, is it really You?!" And she opened the door and welcomed me in and I felt so all at once happy and horrible and overwhelmed with guilt... I loved her so... how could I have stayed away so long?
There are so many more things I would like to write about my Grandma Wilson, but they will have to wait for another post... The memories fill me with such a heartache... I am so very thankful that she knew where her salvation lies... I so look forward to seeing her again :)