One needs more than two grandmas

I got that stingy feeling you get in the back of your throat when your emotion cord is struck. Yeah, I felt like crying.

I just hugged my garden buddy goodbye. I'm not sure when I will see her again, but I know she made this summer special, giving me cucumbers, letting me raid the tomato bushes, inviting me to an "Energy Fair" special dinner. Yeah, she means a lot to me. She's a wonderful lady, an adoptive grandma.
She gave me homemade grape-jelly.

I worked in her garden about once or twice a week up until today, November 18. Before I would sit in my car preparing to leave, flexing my dirty-dry hands, or attempting to dig the soil out from beneath the finger nails with the keys, she would hand me an envelope containing the unimportant cash (I almost feel guilty taking it), and my newspaper articles she would snip out of the gazette for me. She looked for them every week.

Now I feel like I'm losing another grandma. One needs more than two in their lifetime. I need friends who are slow to judge, eager to smile, and kind. Yes-- I need kindness, and I don't think I can get that from people who haven't figured out what that entails until they've lived.

She said to visit anytime I get the notion, and although I can daydream about stopping by with a perfectly baked pie, and sitting at the table together like the "apple pie without cheese" days with Grandma Peek, I doubt that will happen before I leave town having graduated. I suppose I will write her letters. They are one of my favorite things in the world after all. Maybe I'll sign before my name Smile just like my grandma did, her reminder tattooed on my wrist, my heart.

I don't think I've learned enough at all from her. I must keep this correspondence going--life lessons.