Aunt Gladys

I am thankful for my Aunt Gladys, thankful that she is "Home" for Christmas.
I am thankful for her life, her generosity, her hospitality, her sense of humor, her stubbornness.

I am thankful for a flood of memories...
For playing "kitchen" in her kitchen with a curtain covered orange crate full of play dishes,
For countless meals at her table and her house,
For pickles, rye bread, ostkaka, Swede beans, brownies, spritz, potato salad, and cantaloupe wedges with a dip of vanilla ice cream.

For "Joy girls" at her house when I was in elementary school, and Junior Church with flannel graph stories.

For games with sugar cubes, cards, puzzles, and laughter.

For trips to Denver, California, Hawaii and Camp Buckskin.
For teaching Brent and me "When in Rome, do as the Romans".

For teaching me in fifth grade.

For my sewing machine,
For college meals with friends, and a little TV for our college apartment.

For talks about life in earlier days, explaining Fairfield life to me in years gone by.

For the big, brown reel-to-reel recorder that she and Lawrence would bring over, recording our voices over and over.

For her close relationship with Lawrence, a love obvious even to an adolescent.
For my spending the night in her bedroom the night Lawrence died, talking into the night.

For her scrapbooks and old photographs.
For the close relationship she shared with my dad, her older brother.

For her treating my daughters and husband as "special" as she treated me.

For Christmas Eves, New Years' Days, and hundreds of ordinary days,

I am thankful.