Ice cream and Jell-O

My grandmother passed away a couple weeks ago. I still can't believe she's gone. When I was little, I loved to sit with her on rainy afternoons and watch old movies. There was Gene Kelly, splashing through puddles and singing in the rain. I wanted to sleep in a hay loft, just like Shirley Temple as Heidi. And we never got tired of watching Groucho wiggle his eyebrows.

We spent a lot of time talking in the kitchen. My grandmother would scoop Rocky Road ice cream into bowls of Jell-O--the "fancy" kind studded with bits of fruit. She listened to my stories and told a few of her own. Sometimes she brought out a shoebox filled with photographs. I didn't recognize the people in those pictures. But she talked about everybody as if they were in the room with us. The little girl on the horse, she told me, was Mom. I stared at that faded picture and tried to imagine the farm where she grew up in Massachusetts.

Grenna, I miss you so much. I'm thankful for the stories that you shared. They were always my favorite gifts from you.

--crissa