Remember

....there was a Christmas in Chicago, and a car accident within 10 minutes of leaving my Uncle's house, and then turning around and heading back.  The next next day we got on the road again, and we made it to Wichita.  My grandmother came running out of the house, near tears, so grateful we were there safely.

....the gate that lead into my grandparents backyard.  The garage was not connected to the house, there was a small brown fence, and a gate, and I used to think that was so cool.

....one of the first times I got to drive by myself was in Wichita.  I drove my siblings and myself to a movie just down the road.  It was a warren theater.  It still has a warm place in my heart.

....the park that has the Wizard of Oz characters.  We went there all the time. And Old Towne.  And the Segwick County Zoo.

....my Grandfather took my hands in his, I was a small person, very small, maybe 7?  And we were sitting on a bench outside of a restaurant, waiting on the others.  Probably my cousins and my family.  And he said, long fingers, piano playing fingers.

....running around my grandmothers house after taking a bath.  We had towels on.  And she thought that was silly.  We sat in the living room for a while in just our towels.  And she brushed our hair.

.....we were allowed to have a coke with dinner.  We were never allowed to have coke with dinner at home.  But at Grandma's, sometimes we were.  And we were allowed to lick the spoon.  We were never allowed to lick the spoon at home.

....they had really old toys.  Really old.  I can't even think what they were but I just remember they were really old.  And she had really old magazines.  And a coffee table in the basement that had a wooden top and a wooden bottom and there was space between made by metal pieces, if that makes sense.  I played with paper dolls on that thing.  It was there house.

.....We sewed dolls for the children at the children's hospital in her basement.  She was a volunteer there and at the  children's museum.

.....We helped Granddad pick strawberries in his garden.  And once we picked grapes.  But I don't remember grapes growing over the back gate in the garden very often.  They had bird houses too.

.....Granddad played the organ only a few times that I remember.

.....We only had chicken a few times.  My grandparents didn't like chicken.

.....they told stories about growing up in the great depression, about how to save.  Save everything.  Money, food, tin foil, wrapping paper.  They had a wall in their basement that was just shelving with doors.  It was quite fancy, actually.  And it was filled with cans of jam and empty cans waiting for food.  And there was a box down there that had decades worth of Christmas cards.  And my mother's wedding dress in a closet.

.....Granddad watched the fights on the small tv in the kitchen with the volume up real loud.  He really liked watching wrestling.  They had a small tv upstairs that had a turn dial, no remote control.

.....Granddad had a heart doctor who told him to drink a glass of red wine.  I saw him sitting at the table with a very small glass trying to drink it.  My grandparents were teatotalers.

.....They participated in their neighborhood and were good neighbors.  And they went to the same church for many, many years.

.....There was a park across the street from their house that I used to wlak to all the time.  We played there a lot.  There was a swing set in the backyard but it only had two sings.

.....Granddad was out in California when our swingset was delivered.  He put it together for us.  It was about Easter time, maybe?  I would have been about 7.

When I was in Kansas this past week, my aunt said something about having stayed in the same place for a real long time.  I can't remember exactly how it came up in conversation but I wish I had said something along the lines of this to her ...

I moved around a lot.  All the time.  Very few things in my life were constant, but Kansas and Lansing, IL were.  The homes of my Aunt and my Grandmother in Kansas became touchstones.  Home base.  When my parents got lost or separated when we were driving / moving, they both knew to call Wichita.  Grandmother was the connector.  And this happened more than once.  They got lost once and Dad called Wichita and mom got mad at him later, after they met up.  "You called mom?  Oh geez I bet shes worried!"  I think stability is important for kids, and for me, stability in terms of housing, of places, was Wichita and Pittsburg, KS.  Going there, even now, is almost like going home.

I don't have a place to go back to, that's like going back to where I grew up.  But I do have Wichita and Pittsburg.  And I think that counts for a lot.

So what my parents couldn't give me in stability, my grandparents and my aunt did.  And I'm forever grateful.  It's meant more than they know.