Week 23

 As a child every summer my little sister Molly and I spent a week with Grandmother Adkins in Opelika, Alabama.  I have amazing memories of paper dolls, sweet tea, spinklers and chocolate pie with that Grandmother.  It seems the only time we ever made paper doll world was at her house.  We'd make her entire tiny apartment our playhouse. Which was actually just chopped up Sears catalogues Grandmother saved just for us.  If times were good she'd take us to the "Wal-marts" and let us pick out one paper doll book each.  Oh man we loved those because they had stands and were made of thick paper.  Good times for sure.....

The other fond memory I have of her were the webbed chairs.  Man she loved those things.  She'd sit on her tiny stoop, rock and smoke.  They were teal and white webbed, and were rockers!  Molly and I always rocked ourselves silly.  I can still hear her saying to us, "Girls you gonna rock so hard you're gonna fall back and break your head, and my chair!"  I can remember the ordeal of having them re-weaved.  I'm not sure what happened to the chairs.  I do wish I'd mentioned to Dad how much they meant to me and my childhood.  I imagine once we moved her into the assisted they were thrown in the trash.  I mean, who uses them anymore?  They did like to pinch the back of legs! 

I also have a fondness for willow trees.  There is something about them....I have a vague memory of one somewhere in my childhood.  It has to have made a mark else why would I still have a vision of it? Swaying, rustling, sheltering.  Beauty.  I think alot about growing old these days.  Not the morbid sense of dying old....but the growing older and wise older.  I'm definitely taking more time to reflect and listen to my heart these days.  Trying hard to eliminate what makes me sad, stressed and overwhelmed.  Finding a groove that fits the family and me.  Thus why the words on this little painting just flow so lovely right off the page and transcend me to a place and time when Billy and I can indeed sit quietly growing old under the willow tree.  How about you?  Where shall you sit and grow old?