Grandma Had Sass!

Grandma liked to tell me with a stern look in one eye (the other squinted) "Go to church." The drive was long through the Eastern Oregon mountains too Grandma's house. You know the old song.... Well it was always worth the trip. Unfortunately the time in between became shorter as I grew older. The first thing Grandma would want to do when I'd arrive is feed me. "Have you eaten?" She'd ask firmly. No matter if I'd eaten or not she was determined to stuff me. "Well, you look like you haven't eaten a thing!" I never could say no to her Crazy Cake (Sylvia's special spell) Once you've had a bite your troubles seem a little less heavy. Then the next question would come, and only after my plate was empty. "Chris have you been to church?" I stopped going for a long stretch of time in my late thirties - early forties and I dreaded Grandma's discerning eye. I remember the first time I told her I stopped going to church. The silence seemed to roll in from the back porch, through the kitchen and then just hover over the floral country couch where I usually sat. Grandma leaned back in her big blue chair, looked at me with a sad disapproving glance and said, "Ahaaa..." Doesn't sound like much to regular folk, but I knew what it meant. I could see a hundred soul instructing words in her right eye.

I've been thinking of Sylvia more lately. I stood in back of an old woman last week. I couldn't see her face, but I could smell her fragrance, the same perfume my grandma wore. My subconscious mind could hear Sylvia's voice hollering in my left ear, "Hello Chris! I'm still here, smell me..... Grandma had sass and lots of it!. Sometimes her stubborn ways made people mad, but her ways made me laugh. She didn't like conformity either. I think of her words, words she could only say in her own fashion. So many of them, they just pop in and out of my my mind so fast like an unsuspecting breeze. "Stick in the mud," that was one of her sayings. She told me once on one of my last visits with her, "I didn't weigh more then two cents. She never went a visit without calling me her little angel, and reminding me of the day I was born. She called me by a variety of names... "Stink Bug," just popped into my mind.