Jaci Dawn

I had the privilege of corresponding with a second grade boy this past school year. It was part of a school project, and I didn’t expect to receive anything out of it beyond the occasional letter, and maybe hope for it to continue on long after the school year. My final letter from the school project arrived earlier this week, this time in a large manila envelope. There was a book inside the envelope.

When My Grandma was Young

By Zephania (sic)

When my grandma was young she played with her cousins. And she put black olives on her fingers and ate them.

She had a cat named Jacob and a dog named Butchy.

She also liked art and liked to play outside.

When my grandma was young she pretended to be horses and played army with her brother.

When my grandma was young she was an angel in every church play every year.

When my grandma was young she was shy and had a first grade teacher named Mrs. Jolly.

She cleaned the house every night for her mom.

Her birthday is on November 2nd.

She had a T.V. that was black and white.

Her house was pink when she was little. It had a vegetable garden and a strawberry patch.

She caught bugs in jars.

She came to see me in Alaska and I went to see her in Oregon. Now my Grandma likes her garden. THE END

(Love how there are oranges and bananas in the garden)

Now, because I know Zephaniah’s parents are good parents, that is as much of my blog as they will show him. But there’s a little “truth in reporting” disclaimer here.

I believe I taught all of my grandkids (who have ever eaten Thanksgiving dinner with me) this unique talent:

how to eat black olives properly.

I love how big my cousin’s nose is. I haven’t decided which cousin that is, but it’s most likely Janis, as we are closest in age and Teressa isn’t on Facebook for me to Tag). So, Janis it is.

I should have mentioned that Jake was black and white.

Butch was black and white, too.

I love his teeth.

What my brother will do with this, I don’t know. I’m not going there. I just want to say my Howitzer is…

Shoot. I can’t do this.

Sorry, Z.

Some day, you will understand, Z.

I was Cinderella. I vacuumed and dusted and cleaned the house every night for my mother.

She just rolled over in her grave.

Awwww… 8 years old is how old Z is. I get to be 8 in his book.

♥

This is a black and white TV in the mind of a child who has never watched anything in black and white.

Yup. That was my childhood TV.

Not a bad rendition of the very large, concrete, and PINK house that I grew up in.

And almost as scary.

It was haunted.

It stood out.

Bug One and Bug Two. I think Bug Two is a spider.

This is highly accurate, except that I used a Kill Jar with carbon tetrachloride that we bought over the counter at the local pharmacy/soda bar. We’d have a cream soda at the same time. I’ll let you look Carbon Tet up. Trust me when I say that you cannot purchase it over the counter nowadays. But neither can you chase the DDT sprayer down the street so you’d be mosquito-proof for a few days (or until Mom made you bathe), and we used to do that, too.

If you look carefully at the map, Z penciled in the route to Alaska from here, by car.

That’s pretty freaking awesome.

Thank you, Zephaniah, for preserving my history.

I will need this when they put me into a nursing home and I want to remember my childhood.

I love you to Infinity and Beyond!