(Probably Not All) The Things I Wish I'd Said About My Grandma

My Grandma passed away a few days ago and I spoke briefly at a graveside service. Too briefly. Here are some things I remembered after the fact that I should have said about her.

I'd give anything to have a piece of my Grandma's homemade chocolate pie. Other people have made them using her recipe, but they didn't taste as good.

She spoiled her dogs and grandchildren. A lot!

She watched "When a Man Loves a Woman" and "The Shawshank Redemption" every time it was on. No one really knew why.
For a person who only went to school through eighth grade, she could do the crossword puzzle pretty damn fast.

We'd spend the night with Grandma just to get some of her pancakes, which were thin like crepes, although I didn't know back then what a crepe was. And she made her own syrup which she served with a ladle and was roughly the same temperature as molten lava.

She loved to read newspapers. The best gift you could get her if you were traveling was a community paper from wherever you'd been. Although she may not have known the people the stories were written about, she'd read them cover to cover.

At Halloween, Grandma always made her grandkids a little package of candy. If you weren't going to make it by the house, she'd save it until the next time she saw you. This was something she did even after we outgrew trick-or-treating. I'm not quite sure how long she did it, but I got my last one when I was 38, usually when I came to visit for Thanksgiving.

My Grandma only cared about two things: The St. Louis Cardinals and anyone who walked through her door. If you needed someone to talk to, she lent an ear.If you needed a place to stay, there was room.

Although I'm pretty sure she wouldn't have left my Grandpa for them, I'm pretty sure she had full on crushes on Elvis Presley and Ted Simmons.

She was funny, but she never tried to be. She was our family's answer to Yogi Berra. On the tail end of a family gathering, we were talking about how her grandkids were so tall, with the exception of one. My cousin, Kip is several inches shorter than all of us, even his sister. Grandma said, "You know... Kippy would be a lot taller if his legs weren't so short." Yes, Grandma, everyone knows that.

When I was younger, my very favorite thing to do while visiting my Grandma was to scare the hell out of her. Favorite place to hide was the space between the wall and the refrigerator, but I'd use any corner or door to hide behind and jump out at her. Every time, same reaction: "Godblessit, Joel! You wanna give me a heart attack?"

She was scared to death of snakes - all species - from rattlesnakes to garter snakes and hoop snakes (which don't exist but she told me she had nightmares about) to plastic snakes that I bought with my own money when I found out she was scared to death of snakes.

There's nothing more embarrassing than walking from the on-deck circle to the plate and hearing your Grandma say for everyone in the dugout to hear, "Get a hit, Joely!" except getting a hit and her yelling "WAY TO GO, JOELY!!" so loud that even the opposing team could hear it. Joely is a girl's name, after all, something Grandma never quite grasped.

Grandma blamed her forgetfulness on Alzheimer's, which I changed to "old timer's disease" when she first used as it an excuse when she was in her early 40s.

Grandma never lost her Missouri Bootheel drawl, which meant that the way she said things different than most folks. Amongst the grandkids, one of the favorite Grandma expressions was unanimous, and my cousin, Kendirley does a really good impression of it. When she was calling out my Grandpa for something he said or did, she'd say "Oh Lawton, that's just awful." The way she said "awful" was the clincher; not quite three syllables, but definitely not two. "AW-uh-ful."

I'll miss the way she hugged me -  just on the neck, and almost strangling me - when we were getting ready to leave after a visit. I'll miss the way she talked and the way she said my name, which also got elongated into two-and-a-half syllables. I think most of all, I'll my Grandma's laugh and how she'd snort sometimes when she really got tickled.

Those are all the things I wish I'd said about her.

What I learned playing catch

I put this in my Facebook profile a couple of weeks ago. It may be an old adage, or a variation of one, or it may be something I just made up. In the last two weeks, I realize how true it is.

"The more I become like my parents, the better I like myself."

I like simple things now. A fire outside on the patio. Cooking out. Having a beer with friends. A memory long forgotten, brought back by a song on the radio. Here's one that I never really considered until the recent bout of warm weather...

Playing catch.

It's so simple. And I don't mean to get all "Field of Dreams" on everybody, but bear with me. (That was a beautiful thing, though, at the end. Makes me cry every time.)

When he's in the mood, Tristan will join Aidan and me outside to play. He's more difficult to play catch with, for a few different reasons, most of which stem from his autism. He has a VERY short attention span. Shiny things and squirrels and cars and the dog and sticks and grass and rocks and dirt and other things all tax his concentration. He likes to play, but it seems like he always wonders about doing something else.

He gets frustrated when he doesn't do something well. He doesn't get very far away because he wants to catch and throw every ball just right. When he misses, or more accurately, when I fail to make it land squarely in his glove, he lets out a little scream while he's chasing after it. But when he catches the ball, he has an absolutely priceless look on his face. He gets a little too close to throw the ball back, and I've taken a few unfortunate hits, but he's fun to watch.

Aidan, however, is my catch-playing partner. We've been playing every day since it got warm. We even play in the morning while we're waiting for the bus. I can't help but think about Ralphie's kid brother in "A Christmas Story" who can't move his arms while I'm watching Aidan try to throw while wearing a winter coat. But he's so eager to play catch whenever we can, even in the cold.

He's hard to teach because he's left-handed, but like everything else, he's good at it. He can really throw pretty hard. He doesn't catch particularly well yet, because he's just a little bit afraid of the ball. I think he's got "pitcher" written all over him.

Most of the time, we don't talk, and there's a rhythm that we get into, and it's just nice to watch him. He uncorks a wild one every now and then and we have to crawl into the bushes to get it. Or he'll miss one and has to chase it into the street.

Occasionally, he asks questions and a few days ago, he came up with one that is really the point of this whole story. "Did you play catch with your Dad, Daddy?"

His question made me stop what I was doing for a moment. I hold my Dad in high regard, and I learned a lot from him, but my Dad was a long-haul trucker when I was a kid.

I held the ball when I answered his question so Aidan would fully understand. "We played catch sometimes, but Grandma Shirley was who really taught me to play catch."

"Gramma Shirley played catch?" he said, his voice getting really high on the end, as it is prone to do when he's surprised by something.

"You bet. She was really good. And she was a good teacher," I said.

"Do you think Gramma Shirley will play catch with me next time we're in Wichita?"

The thought of that made me laugh. "Suuuure, buddy. Grandma Shirley would LOVE play catch with you."

Sorry, Mom.

Oh. And thanks.