My Kind of Grandmama

This afternoon, Handsome came with me to my parent's house to help my mother decorate the Christmas tree. As we were driving over, I started to get a stinger of a sinus headache, so I begged off on the decorating and lay down on the couch as they got started. They were opening the storage totes full of shiny festive baubles as I closed my eyes and drifted off to sleep.

I was awakened a while later by Handsome trying to sneak a Santa hat onto my head as I slept. I woke, but I didn't get up - I had failed, once again, to take the Excedrin before the nap so that it would be in effect when I woke. The headache was still there, and though the nap hadn't really done me any good, it seemed to have given the headache all the energy of a five-year-old on methamphetamine.

Terrific.

As I lay there and squinted at the light, wondering why the hell light should cause my sinuses to pulse with pain like that, I heard my mother and Handsome continuing with the decorations.

"Be careful with those," I heard my mother say. "They're made of glass, and pretty old."

"Okay," Handsome replied.

And then, quite clearly and calmly, but without the slightest trace of humor in her voice, my mother spoke again.

"And remember: If you break anything I'll have to kill you."

A smile sprang to my lips at the familiar words. I'd heard them directed at me more than once growing up. I forced my eyes open to check out the scene, and saw Handsome holding something in one hand that I could not quite make out, and he was peering at his Grandmama cautiously. I could see him thinking,
She wouldn't really kill me, right? But she sounded so calm, not like she was angry, but not like she was kidding either. Um...


My mother just watched him think, and smiled at him.

Handsome turned, and with exquisite caution moved to place the ornament on the tree as I lay there laughing quietly despite the pain it caused my head.

Some grandmothers bake cookies. Some read bedtime stories. My son's Grandmama does all those kinds of things, but she also keeps him, very sweetly, on his toes.

That's my kind of Grandmama.

Talk to you later!