My Favorite Things

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Granny Hat is finally done packing and has time now to take a little emotional inventory.  She has a list of “hasta la vistas” to complete:

* merry meetings with dear friends and family

* some honest to goodness tree hugging and a last walk through the orchard

* one more stroll along the Pacific Ocean

* her last California boysenberry harvest and jamming

* a sit down in each room to call back the memories

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Granny Hat’s better half has made two trips to Montana already and the house is nearly empty. It echoes with memories, so many busy, noisy, joyful, sorrowful times.  Would we like it if houses could talk; do the walls have memories and feelings? 

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The schoolroom could tell about flags waving while saying the pledge of allegiance, the reciting of the states and their capitols or repeating the Presidents of the United States in order and the Books of the Bible.  The chalkboard that was filled and erased over and over must have some stories to share.  The dining room where really everything happened: meals, crafts with hot glue, fights over homework, science projects, fabric cutting, listening to Paul Harvey or Rush Limbaugh on the radio, endless hours of Adventures in Odyssey. Gymnastics, martial arts, tap dance practice in bedrooms kept things crazy and of course, piano lessons every afternoon in the living room. The old, outdated kitchen that Granny hoped to renovate just kept cranking out cookies and dinner as if it was afraid of being replaced. Granny is sorry to leave you, dear house; you kept us warm and safe. It might not have been the “house of her dreams” but dreams were guarded and blossomed in it. 

“Houses are like people – some you like and some you don’t like – and once in a while there is one you love.”
― L.M. Montgomery, Emily Climbs

“It was a mistake to think of houses, old houses, as being empty. They were filled with memories, with the faded echoes of voices. Drops of tears, drops of blood, the ring of laughter, the edge of tempers that had ebbed and flowed between the walls, into the walls, over the years.
Wasn’t it, after all, a kind of life?
And there were houses, he knew it, that breathed. They carried in their wood and stone, their brick and mortar a kind of ego that was nearly, very nearly, human.”
― Nora Roberts, Key of Knowledge

There really are many wonderful, beautiful things about life in California that Granny will miss.  These are just a few of her favorite things.  Sing to the tune of the song that Julie Andrews made so famous:

Towering redwoods and sweet boysenberries,

Summers at Pinecrest, plums, walnuts and cherries.

Gardens that grow Summer, Fall, Winter, Spring,

These are a few of her favorite things!

Fresh cut cilantro and cool ocean breezes,

Sweet peas and sailboats, burritos with cheeses.

Music and laughter, her friends that all sing,

These are a few of her favorite things!

When the snows fall, when the elk call,

When she’s feeling blue………

Dear readers, you will have to help Granny finish off the song, she is busy wiping her eyes and blowing her nose .

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