You're the Top!

Happy birthday to these two.

Grandma is 91 today*. A few weeks ago I watched her do sit-ups at the gym. Shouldn't surprise me. This is the woman who had 11 children, flew planes, was licensed to drive semis and served two missions. Oh, and has a posterity that now reaches well into the triple digits. That's quite the family tree. I'm lucky to be a small part of it.

Thank you for reading "Winken, Blinken and Nod" in the upstairs bedroom before bed. Thank you for making hootenany pancakes and washing my face in the morning when I slept at your house. Thank you for making bridesmaid dresses and bags to carry my violin music in. For letting us ride backwards in the mint green Ford and for a freezer-full of mint chocolate chip ice cream. Thank you for lovely dinners on your ivy plates at the dining room table. For mashed potatoes, dup, and limpa bread and poems before dessert. For letting me watch Jeopardy with you and Grandpa in the family room. For introducing me to Doris Day and James Garner. Thank you for not getting angry when I broke your ostrich egg from South Africa. Thank you for teaching me where I came from. For Brigham City peaches. For bean bags and dress ups. For being a faithful blog follower. Thank you for teaching me to love art, summer days in Iowa, and pearl rings. Thank you for letting me sit on your lap in church and for teaching me that a measuring tape can entertain fussy children during sacrament meeting. Thank you for keeping the secret of a lifetime on June 25, 1991. Thank you for marrying Grandpa. Thank you for taking care of him. Thank you for the cabin and family reunions. Thank you for teaching me that family comes first and for being the reason my cousins are my best friends.

I love you, Grandma. You're the Top.

*Grandpa would have been 95 last week.

on the radio

While we remodeled our house we lived with my Grandma and Grandpa, across the street from our friend Emily. Emily was in junior high. She had a brother Jon, who was in high school. He wore khaki shorts and rugby shirts and watched MacGyver. His room was a never ending expanse of The Unknown: trophies and yearbooks high atop a shelf, a stereo with speakers bigger than our heads and, a water bed. Jon was the epitome of high school cool, and we knew it.

Emily, being related to Jon, was pretty cool, too. She taught us about the local radio station Q99 and told us that when you're in junior high you don't call your friend and ask if you can "play." Instead, you say, "Can you do something." Or "Do you want to hang out." My sister and I would listen to Emily's tales of junior high, wide-eyed and innocent, in shock that there were kids who would skip class to go smoke in the gully behind the school.

Sometimes, Jon would let us listen to his stereo. For those few moments, we seemed endlessly fly. When Emily came to play at Grandma and Grandpa's, we would steal the radio from the family room and plug it into the socket behind the sofa in front of the big window in the living room. One person was in charge of calling Q99 to request a song, usually Emily, because she had experience with that sort of thing. Indian-style on the wood floor, we'd perch on our elbows on our knees and wait. We'd turn the volume down low low low and stick our ears close to the speakers. I remember worrying Grandpa would find our little secret radio refuge, but it went undiscovered. I felt grown-up, a little mischievous and totally cool.