My Grandma V.

I received a package in the mail a few days ago. It was filled with sewing stuff from my grandma Vaden. When I opened it, it smelled like the barbies at Grandma's house. Everyone's house has a unique scent. Grandma V's house is no different. And the barbie box, in particular, has its own unique scent. I loved playing with those old barbies, each with home-made clothing. When I was little, I discovered some drawers in Grandma's basement which had old silky scarves. I was a bit obsessed with those scarves, and I used to sneak into the drawer and play with them. They were blankets/towels/togas/whatever for my dolls and animals toys.

I loved to watch grandma make bread. My favorite part was when she shared the dough with me. The dough was almost as good as the finished product! That woman made the best bread in the world. And her pancakes! I used to get yelled at for shoving too much pancake in my mouth at once, but who could blame me?? I can't even remember the last time I had a grandma pancake. Or a bowl of wheat germ. She sure knew how to make a tasty bowl of wheat germ. I LOVED it when she would fix me a bowl.

My last phone call to Grandma V was rather uneventful. I was trying to refill an antibiotic prescription, and I was couldn't remember which antibiotic I had had an allergic reaction to. So I called grandma to have her test for me. Since I was at the grocery store, I didn't stay on the line much longer and chat like I usually did when I would call her. There were quite a few times during August that I thought to myself "I haven't talked to grandma in a while, I should call her." And I never did, and now I'll never be able to.

But I'm glad I called her as often as I did. We talked about gardening and raising children and whatever else was going on in life. I always enjoyed talking to her, and I could always count on getting a card in the mail from her about a week after our conversation. She sent quite a few random cards, too. Just to let me know she was thinking about me. I always thought that was really sweet.

I inherited a lot of traits from my grandmother. One of which is my non-competitive nature. I liked playing upwords and scrabble with Grandma, because we play "everybody wins" scrabble. We play and see how many points we can make as a team. Can we get a combined score of over 500? It's a lot more pleasant to play games that way.

I also inherited her shyness. In large groups of people, I pretty much just shut down. Probably 15 years ago, we were in Idaho Falls at someone's house with a lot of other people. I don't remember why. Maybe someone was getting baptized. I don't know. Anyway, I sat down next to grandma, and she confided in me that she always felt uncomfortable at events like this. There were just so many people and it was hard to be a part of conversation. You don't want to cut anyone off or talk over anyone. Well, I don't remember exactly how the conversation went, but I remember thinking that she just explained perfectly the way I feel in large groups of people, and I had never known or noticed how shy she was before that day.

I remember when Grandma used to paint a lot. I was fascinated by her brush holders. It looked like a wire spring strung over a mason jar. I couldn't ever figure out why she put her brushes in that wire. Looking back on it now, I'm thinking it was a rather ingenious way to keep her brush tips from getting all bent up.

I used to enjoy helping Grandma sort the pink slips for the lumber yard. I felt so useful and grown up. We'd have huge stacks of pink papers and our task was to put them in numerical order. Another thing I really liked to do was use her sponge to wet the back of the Ivy's Market stamps and put the stamps into the booklets. I don't even know what those stamps were for, but I thought it was great fun putting those stamps into those booklets.

What I'm just now realizing is that Grandma V. had a way of utilizing my help while making me feel useful and "grown-up." I think that's a pretty great talent.

I love my Grandma Vaden, I feel as though it has only been in the past few years that I've really started to get to know her through semi-frequent phone calls. I feel like we had a lot more visiting to do. I want to know more about her time in college. I think I heard once that she played basketball. I wanted to know more about that. I still have a hard time believing that if I dial her number, I won't hear her say "Hello, Vadens."

I miss my sweet little Grandma.