Momaw, me & Popaw ~ summer 2000
We always lived close to him and my Momaw growing up, and some of my best childhood memories were made with them. My sisters and I are their only grandchildren, so they always had plenty of love to spread between the three of us. Many a Friday night was spent at their house and sleeping in one of Popaw's t-shirts was always a treat for us. They were like nightgowns on our child-size frames.
As toddlers, he took us with him to our neighborhood grocery store with our little plastic shopping carts and let us push loaves of bread to the checkout lane. Well into our childhood, he would balance us in the palm of his hand, toss us into the air, and catch us on our way back down. We would chant, "Fly me, Popaw!" and giggle while he tossed us and caught us over and over. And over.
He would get in the floor on all fours and give us "horsey rides" on his back - sometimes all three of us at once. And the Christmas he and Momaw got us Cricket dolls, he was sure to give them a ride, too.
He would sit in the floor while we "fixed his hair" for hours on end. He never complained while we put hair clips, barrettes, and pigtails all over his head. And he always smiled for pictures afterwards while we sat proudly beside him.
We would jump in piles of leaves that he'd raked and he never fussed that we had undone all his work. We would sit with him on the riding mower while he mowed the field behind their house, and we thought we were really somethin'. And when we helped Momaw make biscuits on Saturday mornings, he said they tasted sweeter because we had our hands in the flour.
He and Momaw took us camping every summer at Greenbo Lake, and "back on the hill" - as we called it, on the land of their closest friends out in the country. One summer after I had a horrible bike wreck, he wiped my tears away and cleaned blacktop out of my wounds. He had such a gentle hand that I hardly felt a thing. I was afraid to go back to school that fall because my face wasn't completely healed yet and I was afraid my friends would laugh at me. He said if they laughed at me then they weren't really my friends. I never forgot those words, and luckily, realized my classmates were my friends after all.
He always bought us watermelons in the summer and let us dig into them with spoons on the kitchen table. He let us sit on the armrest in his car (back before seatbelts were mandatory!) to help him "drive" all the way to town. Little did we know that he was steering the wheel the whole time.
We always told Popaw that we would never be too big to sit on his lap, and I remember climbing on his lap well into my teen years. While I was at their house this Halloween, Popaw told me that he was sitting in the same recliner he used to rock me in. He told me the story of how I came in from school one day my senior year, in tears, and said, "Cheer me up, Popaw..." He said I climbed onto his lap, he gave me a hug, and I was asleep in a matter of minutes.
me asleep on Popaw's lap ~ late 90s
Happy Birthday, Popaw. You mean so much to me. And I'm willing to overlook that thing about the cheese... but only because I love you to the moon and back. ;)
2 comments:
more tears...
That is the sweetest thing! I have fond memories of him as well as a child...Deb is the sweetest man I know. You are so lucky to have him as your grandfather!
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