Monday, July 20, 2009

Freshly Sharpened Pencils

I saw something on facebook today that got me to thinking and remembering so I thought I'd share. A friend of mine posted that she'd just bought her son's back to school supplies. Other than thinking-oh my goodness seriously already??!! I thought..wow. I miss that...

I loved the smell of new pencils (wooden #2s of course-none of this mechanical pencil nonsense), a new, shiny, trapper keeper (b/c obviously last year's care bear one is just TOTALLY out of style), some fresh composition books, and a pencil box to hold all of your pencils and erasers and ballpoint pens. All of it! I loved it! And all of these are things that I associate with my Granny Ada. My mom and dad weren't poor by any means, but we definitely had some fun times trying to make ends meet and one thing Granny would love to do is buy me things, and hey-I was a kid-of course i was okay with that! One of our special, yearly trips was the trip to get back to school supplies. I'd agonize over which trapper keeper I would be able to bear for a WHOLE year, and she'd patiently wait and weigh out the pros and cons of each choice with me. She was such a loving, generous human being...i find myself actively missing her every now and then, even though it's been 18 years since she passed. Wow, is that right? 18 years? It seems like yesterday and ages ago all at the same time. Anyways, seeing that facebook status update took me back to all of that in an instant. It's funny how the mind works, isn't it?

I miss you, Granny Ada.