Remembering to Celebrate

When I was a kid, my grandmother had three books in her house - The Bible, The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, and Little Women. I read the latter two books each summer when I went to visit. Sadly, I never read from my grandmother's Bible until after she passed away.

It was during the process of cleaning out her house after her passing that I was surprised to find several Farmer's Almanacs in one of her trunks. The publication dates at first seemed to be random, leaving me to wonder why she had kept these particular books, and why I had never seen them before. I soon realized, however, that each book represented the year of birth of one of her grandchildren, myself included. Yes, there it was in plain sight on the front cover; the year I was born. With a sense of loss and bewilderment, I reclined back on the linoleum floor and contemplated everything I thought I knew about my grandmother.

She was born in South Carolina on a farm, and her southern accent let everyone who met her know right away she was a respectable, southern lady. She was proficient at sewing, quilting (by hand and machine, and never on Sundays), and of course, gardening. She wore homemade dresses everyday, even when working outside in the woodpile and in the garden, and when she did eventually consent to wear pants, they were polyester and pulled up snugly beneath her dress as to avoid any wardrobe malfunctions. She grew thriving plants and was known on more than one occasion to return home from a visit with her family carrying snippets of a philodendron or a Chinese evergreen, which she would put in water to root-out and eventually transfer over to a dirt-filled pot. She believed in God, attended church every time the doors opened, and always made sure my sister and I, as well as my cousins, attended Bible school when we visited each summer.
 
Feelings of ignorance and perplexity stayed with me for days as to why she kept the Farmer's Almanacs hidden away in a trunk. Then one afternoon, while putting away some pre-cut quilt squares I had found stashed inside a second trunk with some small, inexpensive gift items, the answer presented itself.  The quilt squares, the little presents she had bought at the local dollar store for future birthdays and Christmas mornings, all were meant to celebrate us, her family. And the almanacs? They too were celebratory items, notifying anyone who cared to read that during a year of planning, sowing and reaping, a grandchild was born to a traditional southern lady who was also my grandmother. And for anyone, including this grandchild, to be remembered and celebrated in such a way is to know the true meaning of love.