Reminiscing on a Very Hot Day!

I almost felt like I was back in the Southeast today! It was 92 degrees!!!!!! What is this?!

I'm supposed to be feeling the Arctic cool! Not today. Of course the air is much drier here, but I am still hot and sticky. Not many places here (that I have experienced) have A/C. Not our home, the church, nor the pizzeria we escaped to either!

Actually, I am not complaining. I know you suspected you found a weak spot, but really the heat can be cozy. We close the curtains and crank up the fans and take it easy sipping iced tea. That amazing delicacy called sweet tea! Reminds us of being at our grandmother's homes during the long Southern summer. Special times we've spent with each of our grandmothers. Oh, we love them sooo much!

Memama can whip up the most amazing spontaneous suppers. And her award-winning pound cake... Chris and Lee would brag on getting it for their birthdays. Her fried bananas are mouth-watering. Yumm...I think maybe I will add that to the menu for tomorrow. And she has beautiful fresh home-grown flowers decorating her tables. I bet there is a bouquet there right now!

Grandmother had one A/C unit in her living room down in Thomasville, GA, the Deep South! That place gets so hot and humid you can hardly breathe. But we would gather in the living room/kitchen and she would cook all day. As we warshed up supper dishes, we would laugh and accuse her of cleaning out her fridge. She would keep bringing us dishes to wash, the never-ending pile. Grandmother would serve us her famous ice-box fruitcake and we would dive in! Not a crumb would be left in a day or two.

My Grandma Robertson would spend hot summer afternoons with me playing cards. We would sit in her kitchen and play Rummi and Yatzee and watch TV. She had a wrap-around deck and a screen porch. We loved to run and play outside. I remember eating watermelons in her backyard where the sidewalk ended between the hedges. The family had all come over and set up tables under the pecan trees. I ate so much watermelon and spit so many seeds! And Mom and Dad would make homemade ice-cream - orange sherbert! How fun!

My Grandma Brown had a freezer in her bedroom in the old farmhouse. I had to take a nap there every afternoon! :( I would wake up groggy and she would snuggle me until I felt better and then she would ask me what I wanted to eat. I would lead her to the big freezer and we would select a square plastic container of her frozen strawberries to eat with her yellow cake and ice-cream. Now I was a little weird. I wanted to eat them in separate bowls. On the long summer days, we would break beans with Melinda in the kitchen. I still don't know how Melinda always broke hers in perfect little pieces. And later we would run in the freshly mowed and raked front yard catching light'ning bugs at dusk. And then swing on the front porch or the tree swing and talk. Or just listen to the whippoorwills and katydids.

What a heritage we have! We spent a lot of time in our growing years just being together as a family, talking and laughing, working and listening. Talking with us was very important to our grandparents. We felt very important. I want my children and grandchildren to remember times with Chris and I. Sitting together on long hot summer days. Maybe with a fan, maybe with a swing, maybe with a watermelon. Just being together.