Thanksgiving with Granny B

The girls and I packed up and headed to Kansas City. My grandmother is moving to Chicago from a 3 bedroom, full basement house to an apartment. She decided to make only one move versus staying in Kansas City, then later having to move to Chicago.

As you can well imagine, this is both stressful, heartbreaking and sad for her, she is leaving her home of 60+ years, the few friends she has left and a life she has known. For many, this is an easy move, for granny I know it is hard.

The house she leaves behind has gone through raising 2 natural born children and 100's of adopted children who were grandpa's scouts. I lived there for the first 5 years of my life and many summers after that, my grandfather battled cancer from the front room of the house, watching friends, neighbors, his scouts and the squirrels. It has a lot of good memories and like any long lived home, some bad ones...but it has served us well.

When I was younger, the gardens were beautiful under the loving care of my granny, a true green-thumb. The raspberries and gooseberries are harvested for some of the sweetest jelly you have ever tasted. She would like to tell of me digging up the front gardens cause you could find the best night-crawlers there. I played red-rover over the brick walk and spent many of hours with my friend on the front porch.

So, over Thanksgiving, off we went to pack up memories, grandma's house and for me, try to get her to listen to some reason. You can imagine after that many years there was a lot of stuff, did I mention a lot of stuff........

She wants to take it all. Now just measuring the dimensions of the two homes, we know it ain't going to fit. So through pure stubbornness she taught me with honed skilled....as I kept telling her I learned from the master. We got through it with getting rid of a little stuff. Okay, I screwed up sorting and sending some of the sweaters to the salvation army, and yes I heard about it....but things that are precious to her are lovingly packed so they will make the journey, and slowly it is coming together. My parents worked so hard, I was glad I could help in some way.

Oh, I failed to mention I endured being told to shut up and threaten to be hit with the sledge hammer by my granny...I laughed....bless her heart, she can't help it!

Love you Granny B....I know this is hard.