GRAND!parents

I'm not one to write about hard times or anything of that nature.

I tend to bottle all that up and pretend everything is ok.

I cry alone.

I hurt in hiding.

But lately, that has been hard.

My grandfather died last month. 

I've never experienced lose like this before.

The other day I heard Carrie Underwood's song "Just A Dream".

I cried then.

Alone in my car.

And now, I'm crying out loud.

I wrote this on my very first blog.

It sums up what my grandfather means to me.

So I realized...what the grand in GRAND!parents is really all about.

GRAND!parents are supposed to teach you memorable things - things that will guide you through life - things to build a strong mind and being - and in the end, leave you with things to tell your children but only after they learn them from their grandparents.

And I have come to realize, too, that mine are the best!

I can so happily say that my wonderful grandmother taught me to write a check, order from a catalog, and planted the love seed for the Home Shopping Network and other ridiculous home shopping programs...all this before I was 8 or 9. I can so vividly remember staying at her house and watching old sitcoms that used to be on Nick @ Nite (which are now on TV Land, maybe) and then moving onto the home shopping programs till 12 or 1 AM.

As for my grandfather, being just as wonderful as my grandmother, has embedded in me the silly love of simple science experiments and a love for maps, atlases, and road trips. I can remember standing in the kitchen where he showed me the split spoon experiment. I can remember standing at the kitchen table where he showed me how to look up the coordinates of a city in an atlas (and between my grandfather and my dad, I got it down pretty quick and owe a lot of geographical knowledge to them).

And with the love these 2 share, they created my mother, who I owe all of my being to (as if, I don't owe just as much to my dad). I envy the love that they share - that they share with each other, with my mom, and with me.

And the creator of my wonderful father - she was just as grand! Though she left while I was quite young and been gone for many years now, I can still say I learned from her. I learned how to argue and be very headstrong. This she passed on to my father first which then passed to me. And when I get the slightest whiff of some down home country cookin', I can't help but think of her - even then I didn't eat that stuff, I can still see my wonderful family sitting around her kitchen table.

Yes, they are grand! So very, very grand.
And they are the best because they are mine.