Summertime

This time of year always reminds me of my Grandmother; I have been thinking of her a lot the last few days.  When I was a little girl, she lived about ten miles away.  Behind her house was the biggest garden I had ever seen (and with thirteen living children, summertime gardening was a must to keep them all fed).  It was filled with good things to eat and I loved mid-summer when my favorites were ready for harvesting.  She moved away when I was in fourth grade and no longer gardened down South but little pockets of memory are hiding here and there in my mind--sitting at her feet while she rocked and snapped the ends off the green beans, eating tomatoes whole like an apple still warm from the sunshine, watching her slice slightly green and firm tomatoes and enjoying a nice tomato and toast sandwich with her, giggling with my cousin in the corn stalks while she pretended to look for us.  When the farmer's markets begin to overflow with cucumbers and tomatoes and beans and corn, I can't help but think of her.  Plus, it is the best time of year to get my kids to eat veggies--the cucumbers don't have that weird waxy coating on them so my kids will happily eat the skins, the tomatoes have that sweet taste to them instead of the bland mush of trucked in tomatoes, green bean and string beans have that tender crisp to them instead of the chewy texture of frozen/canned.  I garden a little but not to the extent she did--I just don't have the room she had as landlords only let you dig up little pieces of your yard for veggie plants ;)  I know she gardened to save money but I wonder if she always loved the way her Littles would clear their plates of veggies the way mine do?  I wonder if she made sure to have extra plants of their favorite things, just to see them get excited to pick it and eat it before it even made it inside?  I wish she was still here to ask these things.  

I used to think that when I got married, I would go to TN and get married in the tiny little chapel in the old Mill in Cumberland Gap so she could be there.  When I was in graduate school, she was older and didn't really travel anymore.  If I wanted her to be with me, I would have to go to her.  And I so wanted her with me.  I wanted her to meet my children and feed them oranges the way she did for me (they were my favorite and I could never resist them so she would make sure to buy some when she knew I was coming to visit when I was a little girl).  I wanted them to sit at her feet as she rocked back and forth snapping beans and talked about her childhood.  I wanted them to explore the land around her home and rush in to tell her about their finds, the way I had.  And then she was gone.  The closest I can get to sharing my children with her is to tell them about the oranges and the green beans and playing hide and seek in the corn.  

I wonder if they will come to associate summertime with her as well?  It is the time of year I talk about her the most, the time of year she is on my mind often.  I'm glad, though--so many of those I have loved and lost I associate with the time of year they died.  My Grandma, though, I think of most often during the time of year she loved, the time of year she really lived.  She wasn't a fan of winter but she surely did love the summertime :)

 

Have you taken the Pledge?

On November 30, 2009, a beautiful little girl named Cora was born.  Five short days later she would pass away at home, in her mother's arms, of an undiagnosed Congenital Heart Defect.  Cora's mother, Kristine, in honor of her little girl, is on a mission to spread awareness about CHD and has made it her goal that no other parent should have to get their child's diagnosis from the coroner.  November 30th has been declared Cora's Day in her hometown but Kristine wants to take things even further and make Cora's birthday a day of awareness.  So many people view CHD as a rare thing but it is the most common and birth defect.  CHD kills more than all childhood cancers combined.  And yet so many know so little about it......  Take the Pledge.  Demand a pulse ox screening at birth, let your pregnant friends know they should be asking for the screening, write your representatives and ask that they support having heart screenings to the newborn screening panel, learn the signs of a heart defect.  Heart defects are not just something that shows up at birth--it may take years or even decades before a heart defect is diagnosed and treated.  But knowledge truly is power--if you know what to look for and what to ask for, you may just save a life.

http://babyheartscreening.com/November30/  Click over and take a look at the Take the Pledge site :)   My grandmother had a heart baby who could not be saved.  We have come a long way in the last sixty years but there is still a long journey ahead--heart babies are still dying, some of them because they were not diagnosed.  Some day my own children may face this journey and I would hope by then the advances are even further along and diagnostics ensure all babies get treated asap.

Grandma

I have been thinking of my Grandma a lot lately.

When my Dad was about S's age, my Grandma had her fourteenth child, Jeffrey. He never came home from the hospital. My Grandma barely spoke about him and when she did, she was so sad that I never wanted to ask questions and find out more. My Aunts and Uncles and Dad rarely spoke of him either. He is buried a few miles away from where I grew up, in a cemetery by the river that holds several generations of family.

When my Dad had his accident just before Thanksgiving, he talked a lot about his brother and Mom while he was on painkillers. The kids were excited about the baby coming home. When Jeff didn't, my Dad talked about how hard it was on his Mom, how sad she was, how much the other kids were hurting, too. My poor Dad, my son's age, looking forward to a baby that never came. I think about how excited S was about each of his siblings, but especially Iz, and I can't even imagine him having to mourn the way my Dad did.

I sit here beside Iz, ready to hold her hand or comfort her whenever she stirs and I wonder if my Grandma got that opportunity. Did she stay by Jeff's side and cherish those few short days she had him? Or did she have to go home and care for the rest of her children? How my heart breaks for her, losing her baby.

My Dad wasn't sure why Jeff died but after Iz was born, one of his older sisters told him Jeff had heart defects, she couldn't remember which, but they were bad enough that he only lived a week. When I heard, I held Iz close and thanked God that today, fifty-some years later, doctors know how to fix so many things. I think my Grandma would hold Iz close, too, and be grateful that her beautiful great-granddaughter will get the chances Jeff never did. Grandma would have adored Iz.