Beba

 
This is my grandmother's house in Tulsa, Oklahoma.  If the picture was back further, you might see the chain link fence around the property - which had poodles on it.  Designed into the fence - poodles!  She had a poodle....his name was Bo.  She's gone now and I still miss her.....

It amazes me that I can remember her address (which is a very strange address - multiple street references) after all these years.  Considering this week I have forgotten some pretty major things - and yet I can pull an address out of my memory bank for a house I haven't visited in over 30 years.

I used to write her all the time when I was young.  Back in the days when a long distance phone call wasn't something you made unless someone had died and you needed to reach people to let them know.  Letters were the way to go and my grandma and I would write each other back and forth, back and forth.  My letters were typed on one of those clunky black typewriters like reporters used to use.  And the first line was always 'How are you?  I am fine.  What have you been doing?' which I could type with lightening speed using only two fingers.  (I'm typing now with all 10 and am much faster these days - but then again the 'touch' of a computer keyboard is way, way different than an old manual typewriter).

She died when I was 18 or 19....which I remember because I was living with my brother and his family at the time and I really agonized over going to her funeral.  My mom convinced me not to spend the money - I was in college and money was tight.

A couple summers before she died, I visited her and she gave me the quilt squares she'd made when she was pregnant with my Aunt Mary.  It is a hexagon flower quilt - hundreds of small hexagons stitched together.  I took those hexagons and the ones she had 'in process' and I had the quilt finished by a lady in Phoenix.  It turned out beautifully and I still have it and still treasure it.  That quilt began my obsession with quilts.  I sent my grandmother pictures of the finished quilt and she was so thrilled.  My mom said 'she was so surprised you wanted to have it finished'.  It is a family treasure - and I don't have a picture of it but I will see if J. and I can take one.  The pic won't do it justice, though.  It's an heirloom....

A Facebook friend posted that his Tulsa house is for sale and that's what made me think of Beba this morning.  It amazes me the power of the Internet.  Amazing to find that picture and have it instantly take me back to yummy things cooking in the kitchen; escaping to Grandma's house; the times she would come to Phoenix to take care of me and my sister if my mom was out of town....she was such a wonderful lady.