Powder Blue

In my last post I wrote about my grandparents who lived on a farm. I made a passing mention to my "town" grandparents, and I have very fond memories of making the trip up north to see them. My grandfather is a Lutheran minister. As I recollect thoughts about my grandmother, she will always be the picture perfect example of a 1950's housewife, right down to the ruffle apron and pearls. She was an Avon lady for over 40 years, and the closets at my grandfather's house in Saginaw have the perfume bottles to prove it.

I loved it when they came to visit and when we went to visit them. They always brought summer sausage and cheese, and to the present, Christmas is not Christmas without a tray of summer sausage and cheese from Kern's. Grandpa still makes sure that we get a little taste of Michigan, even though we live near the Pacific Ocean. Grandma had a sweet tooth, and I can recall a particular summer they came to see us and she bought us each a tray of cookies that looked like ice cream cones with marshmallow filling. I still look for those cookies when I am shopping, and if I ever find them, I will buy a case of them. At Christmas time she also made these cookies called "Raspberry Smoochies." They are a meringue based cookie made with a package of raspberry jello. So. Very. Tasty. Honorable mentions go to her Lebkuchen and chocolate covered apricots.

Grandma was a lady. Her bedroom always had this soft, powdery smell to it, and whenever she came to visit, she and Grandpa stayed in my room. When they left, my room had that same smell to it. I always thought of it as a powdery blue smell, and I am sure it came from Avon. The more I think about it, the more I realize that I am more like her than any of my other relatives. Come to think of it, when I was little, I was always a little awe-struck by her. Her cool, perfumed smell; the way she sipped her drinks through a straw; the way she held her hands while she ate. After she passed away, my aunt gave me a typed, 40 page copy of a journal my grandmother had written after she and a few girlfriends had gone to New York City. My aunt also gave me a copy of a postcard my grandmother had written to her parents in Michigan. In it she tells them what she and her friends had done and that they only thing she had purchased was a pair of shoes, which is proof that I am related to her. Whenever I travel I make it a point to buy a pair of shoes wherever I go. My mother is now in possession of the black velvet peep toes that were purchased nearly 60 years ago, and if you look at pictures of my grandparents after they were married, my grandmother is wearing those shoes.

Grandpa is my only living grandparent and I am aching to make the trip to Michigan to see him. I keep mentioning to The Rev. that we should make a trip up there to see him, and it is just hard to fit it in to schedules that require us to be everywhere but where we would really like to be. I need to find out if he still keeps a box of Ludens throat drops in his pocket and a freezer full of ice cream. He'll ask us if we want a drink, a Martini or a Manhattan, and if we are hungry. I gain five pounds whenever we go to visit. Perhaps I can convince my parents to bring him out here with his sister some time next year. There is so much for me to share with them, and it is so hard to do when one is 2200 miles away.