ROBIEWANKENOBIE

i remember that smell. salt air mixed with white shoulders and cedar. i loved our visits, right down to the plastic floor mats and the skinks on the sidewalk.

• my grandfather used to take me to the beach early early early in the morning to look for sharks teeth and shells. the butterfly shells were my favorite.
  
  
• he would get up early in the morning and scope out yard sales in the newspapers, then arrange them by location and start time. he would scootch in to the sidewalk and then scootch back out if he didn't see anything. it was all about the deal. if you didn't see anything at a sale that had promise, you were supposed to shake your head and complain that the dealers had probably gotten all the stuff.
  
  
• he thought it important to practice playing his organ at some ungodly hour of the morning.
  
  
• he inducted me as the only girl woodcarver in their group. heck, my grandmother wasn't allowed to even step foot in the garage when carving was afoot.
  
  
• nothing made him happier than to pester my grandmother, but he also did dear little things to make her happy.
  
  
  

• my grandmother taught me how to knit. patiently. year after year. i would knit a scarf and then come back and knit a scarf the next year.
  
  
• she would make her world famous pecan pie.
  
  
• she would make orange juice straight from the tree in her back yard.
  
  
• she had a teacup of the queen and a canadian flag.
  
  
• whenever her "stories" would come on television she would kick you out so that she wouldn't be embarrassed.
  
  
• she loved rocky road ice cream and would be naughty and serve it for breakfast on the day that you left to drive home.
  

i know that i didn't appreciate any of this once i hit my teen years. i mean, who wants to admit that they spent their spring break watching jeopardy and murder she wrote while her grandparents passed around bar cookies. but i look back and i'm just so thankful that my parents bothered with the long drive every year. it had to be an absolute pain in the ass, especially when they were lugging my three brothers down there from new york. i was a lot easier. first of all, because it was only me, and secondly, because i'm an angel.

i wonder what my kids will remember from the time that they've spent with their grandparents this summer. i'm hoping that mr7 will remember seeing the snakes at the library, baking with his grandmothers, and running around with his second cousins. will mr9 remember the time that he spent helping my mother in the garden? hanging out with his aunt s.? i think maybe we'll have to ask them. i think maybe i need to get off my everlovin' ass and do some sort of scrapbook or some such nonsense. or maybe, like me, they'll remember the smells and the rituals unprompted.