Sweet Jenni at www.storyofmylifetheblog.blogspot.com issued a fun challenge to bloggers to blog Every Single Day in May and she supplied the topics for all 31 days. Yep, I’m behind, but there are no rules, and no blog police come knocking if you miss, skip, or mess up. So, hey, I’m in!
Day 19, Sunday: I’m a little behind again so I have chosen Saturday’s topic: Tell a story from your childhood. Dig deep and try to be descriptive about what you remember and how you felt.
Caution: This story is not for those with a weak stomach. You have been warned!
I simply loved to stay at my grandmother’s house when I was little. My sister and I would live over there if Mom would let us. Mamaw Cammie, to put it simply, spoiled us rotten. She wasn’t wealthy by any means. Her house included a separate “smoke house” which she used for storage and from my memory she did her ironing out there. She taught us girls to iron, practicing on our grandfather’s handkerchiefs. She always had a Coke bottle filled with water and a red rosette on the top with holes in it for sprinkling the clothes. Oh, the memories…
We played dress up! I have no idea where she got all of those neat dresses! But I believe she would have let us wear Cinderella’s ball gown if she could have gotten her hands on it.
We hosted the original Rachael Ray’s kitchen. No, really we did. We had our own line of Tupperware; we would set the table for tea, and prepare our gourmet meal and call our special guests to the table. Mamaw and Papaw never complained about the empty cups and saucers. They complimented the meal as if Julia Child herself had prepared it.
We loved to play outside. I could sit on the bank all day in the springtime. Mamaw had the longest row of peonies I had ever seen! To this day I cannot pass a peony bush without thinking of her. I must stop and touch it, take the beautiful, soft bloom in my hand and drink in the fragrant remembrance of long ago.
Every day was carefree and every night was something to look forward to…sleeping in the big bed with Mamaw Cammie! One special night when I was five and my sister Rhea was seven, we had played outside all day and really worn ourselves out. We always had our baths and Mamaw loved to comb out our long hair before we went to bed. My sister and I both had hair down to our waists when we were little. So up in the bed we went and Mamaw told us a story before we would fall asleep, dreaming sweet dreams of another day of play ahead of us…
I remember thinking I was sick in the middle of the night, but I must have been dreaming. And then I faintly remember my little tummy hurting and coughing and feeling sick again. But I drifted back off to sleep for a second time. The next thing I know Rhea is screaming and pushing at me, she is hysterical and I am trying to wake up, not sure at all what is going on. Mamaw is hurrying around, the light has come on, the covers are being pulled back…oh no…I wasn’t dreaming…Rhea is still giving off this ear-piercing scream, “Maaamawww!!!”
And this time I am not dreaming, I really was sick in the middle of the night and she has every right to be upset. Because since I did not wake up and instead rolled over and went back to sleep, everything that “came up” went exactly where you are thinking it went…mostly in Rhea’s long and beautiful hair!
Needless to say the next few hours were spent washing two little girls’ hair, which was a much longer process in the middle sixties! I know for sure Mamaw Cammie didn’t have a blow dryer so we would have either taken turns underneath her big and bulky hair dryer or we went back to bed with a wet head.
It is a miracle that my big sister even speaks to me today after all the trauma my brothers and I put her through. This one was pretty awful but she does get even…and that my friends, is another story, for another day…
