Random Memories

Tootling down the memory path, I came up with a few more pieces of my life that you may or may not care about. Doesn’t matter. I’m putting them down…

My grandparents had a little grocery store in Kansas City and lived in the apartment above it. When my mom had a miscarriage, we moved in with them. My dad was an iron worker and had to travel to wherever the jobs took him, so this was the solution. I was about 2 or 3. At some point, I was given an empty tobacco pouch with a draw string closer. I kept bottle caps in it, and it was one of my most prized possessions. I loved opening up that little bag, taking my bottle caps out and arranging them. I played with that for several years. I don’t know where it is right at this moment, but I do still have it.

I’ve worn glasses since first grade and probably needed them before that, but until I started school, there was no reason back then to have my eyes checked. Once I got them, though, a whole new world opened up. I truly believe that the trouble I had with learning to read was because I couldn’t see well. As soon as we moved to Chico and I was going to a different school, the teacher noticed right away that I probably needed glasses. And from that point, I became a voracious reader. When I was in 2^nd or 3^rd grade, I woke one morning and reached for my glasses on my nightstand. They weren’t there. I went into the kitchen and told my grandma I couldn’t find my glasses. She said my mom had taken them to the optical lab to get the new lenses that were ordered at my last eye check. So I was allowed to stay home from school that day (yay!) BUT I couldn’t read or watch TV without my glasses! I was SO BORED.

My mom was never a real “hands on” type of parent. It was mainly my grandma that raised my brother and me. There was one point in time, though, that for some reason my mom was home more in the mornings. Don’t know why. Maybe the job she was doing at that time started later in the day. Anyway, Mom started making breakfast for us. It was winter, and we frequently had a fire going in the fireplace. Several mornings we were awakened for breakfast and she had made a fire, put the coffee table in front of it, and had bowls of oatmeal all ready for us. It was so great to be eating a nice hot breakfast and watch the flames.

Growing up, all meals were eaten at the kitchen table. There were very few exceptions. I think I might have been in junior high when one evening, my mom set up a TV tray for me in the front room. She said I would be eating my dinner in front of the TV because there was something special on that night that I would enjoy. It was the movie “Bell, Book and Candle” starring Jimmy Stewart and featuring a cat named Pyewacket. Looking back, this was such a tremendous thing my Mom did for me. I wish I could tell her how much this meant to me.