childhood flashbacks...

When I was little, we would visit my Gma Ruth & Gpa Harry every other Sunday after church. We would go to Geneva Presbyterian, drive thr0ugh the Classy Chassis car wash (if we hadn't washed the car on driveway on Saturday) and drive to fancy Grosse Pointe Farms, Michigan. On the way there, we would talk about what everyone was wearing at church...and then make fun of the crazy s&%t people talked about for during our favorite church segment called "Joys & Concerns."

Sometimes, on the way we would bypass the highway and drive down Woodward Avenue . Other times we would take the highway all of the way and stop at the Dawn Donuts to buy flowers from the toothless man in the parking lot. My mom would ALWAYS lock the doors and I would be smashed in the middle of "dad's car" backseat. We always had a GM product -- usually a Chevrolet or a Pontiac. My sister's would force me to sit on the "hump" on the floor of the backseat and rest my head on the seat while they sprawled out on the back. We would BEG to listen to good music -- you know like, Van Halen - 1984 or The Police - Synchronicity. Whenever we got to the guitar lick of a song, my dad would hit the eject button and turn on 97.1 which featured worldess popular music (WHAT A DRAG) or put in a tape of his own. We would all be yelling instructions from the back on how to work that high-tech Pontiac 6000 STE cassette player with auto-reverse. I will admit that I do know every word to the song "What's New" by Linda Rondstat.

Once we got to Gma's and Gpa's we would sit, and sit and sit and maybe take a walk, re-set their clock radio or clock in the car. Sometimes we would drive to Bill Knapp's for dinner. But, they also loved The Sign of the Beefcarver (I think that is where I first fell in love with canned green beans). If we ate at home, Gma Ruth always cooked the same thing -- ham, fresh green beans and cheesey potatoes. She always had chocolate pie and Andes mints or Vernors for a Boston Cooler. For a snack before dinner we would have V8 and cheese and crackers...every time. We spent a lot of time, just hanging out. Gma would model her new coat, or show us the new dress that she had just gotten. She would always share the perfume she had gotten from her Estee Lauder bonus pack. After my Gpa passed away, my dad would balance her checkbook and pay her bills. I can still smell the inside of her house, the smell of extra creamy milk in green drinking glasses and how she always had KROGER bakery chocolate chip cookies that tasted so good. I can close my eyes and remember her white couch with the green floral pattern and the view of the nutty guy across the street who would was his BMW 3 Series EVERYTIME WE WERE THERE.

If by chance, we made the trip to visit on Saturday (both Gma and Gpa graduted from U of M so sometimes we would go there to watch the game) sometimes Gma would take just us girls to Jacobson's for lunch. I would get the sailboat kids meal that came in a plastic boat, complete with a dum-dum sucker for the tiller/rudder of the boat. The dessert was a scoop of ice cream made to loook like a clown with whipping cream for hair and a sugar cone for a hat.

Now that I have my own little person, I am always thinking...what he will remember about my parents. Will he remember their LOVE for yardwork? Will he remember their passion for taking very long walks instead of watching a DVR'd episode of Ellen or having happy hour? Will he remember chocolate cookies, frosted browines or Gma's not so perfectly smooth mashed potatoes? Will he remember how frustrated I sometimes get at Poppy? Will he remember being put in a bear trap or getting a flip-a-rooter? Will he remember their unbelieveabley predicatable meal schedule or Poppy's 1.5 sandwiches, a banana and 4 vanilla wafer cookies for lunch? How bout' the fact that he keeps a whisk broom in the back of his car so he can sweep it out everytime he uses it? Will he remember taking "trip-sheets" (a Knappism for road trips) and picking up a pumpking along the way? Or, will he remember Gma's curlers and her cool Clinique make-up brush and how she always let him dig through her entire bag, and was always so patient like she had nothing else more important to do.

Only time will tell.

Here we are...making memories...there was no tape-player, no chopped steak with au-gratin potatoes and a salad with ranch on the side from Bill Knapp's, a little drama, a few laughs, a few tears, a lot to work on and a lot of hard work.

J.P. might remember how much he hated when I made him pose for a photo. We will call that, "therapy topic #1."

Making memories in Elk Rapids, MI