What You're Made Of

So tomorrow is Mammaw's birthday. The photo is, I believe, her senior portrait. Many of you know my grandmother and know she is flat out my hero. She's raised just about all of us, worked as everything from a telephone operator to a secretary for the coal mines. She stood by my grandfather through cancer and kept the family from falling apart when he died. She made her own cancer seem like nothing more than a papercut. She shoots catfish for eating ducklings. She goes roller skating for her 70th birthday several years ago. She makes the best applebutter and hot rolls on the planet and if you said otherwise we might come to fisticuffs. I don't think it is possible that I could ever be as amazing as she is, and if I came just a little close that would be alright with me.

I appreciate her much more now that she's my only grandparent left. It sucks when you realize things like that, when you should have been appreciating them that much all along. But sometimes I guess it takes things like that to really make you wake up and get a clue.

I'm going home this weekend for a memorial service of a friend's grandmother. I can't imagine not being there because this woman tried her damndest to teach me to cook and because i want to be there for a friend who did the same for me when I lost the 3 grandparents back to back. I think even if we didn't speak for years, you go back and stand by someone when they need it most. And this is one of those times. To make it lighthearted (if you even can) i feel like a mafia member, going to represent the "morgantown family" for all of our friends who will be unable to go home. I'm glad I have people like this in my life, even if they cant be there for everything i know they're still thinking about me, you, whoever. we may not always get along but i know if anything bad ever happened it would be ok. You really find out what you're made of, and what those around you are made of when things are bad. which is why i try to write those dang letters, so i can tell people when things are good. feb and march are both in my purse as we speak. i need to steal stamps from mom while i'm home.

also, to sorta tie this all together, if any of my blogs can ever really be tied together, as of right now i'm going to be walking with ranae in the relay for life here in town at the end of next month. you should support us or join us. and if i don't get to, you should support/join ranae. yes, here i go with my 'causes' again. but this one is obviously close to my heart and i've been supporting it since 7th grade.

so yes. all this thinking about family and things and the weather trying to be nice makes me think of the baby chicks and ducks at the feedstore. i know i wrote about this on my old blog. i probably do every year. i told mom to look for photos of us with the baby animals, but i honestly dont know if there are any. but i loved going to pappaws store when it was baby chick and duck time in the spring. getting to play with all of them and picking out a favorite and beeeeegging mom to let me have one. which she never did. i still really want a baby duck. but i have a feeling calypso would probably eat it. but i'm glad i had experiences like that growing up. it may not be fancy, but it was good.