on days like today...

So it’s official!  I’m 1,000% sick!
No matter how many blankets I used last night I was so cold!
No matter how much hot tea I drank, I couldn’t sooth my throat.
I’m so overly medicated right now, I think the traffic buzzing outside my door
are ocean waves crashing on the shore.

I never really miss home until I’m sick.
Days like this make me miss my grandparents.  They were so loving and so great.  I was honestly their favorite.  Sorry to any cousins that may be reading this.  lol!
  My grandparents never let me go to sleep without letting me know how much they loved me.  On my sick days my grandmother would always keep me home from school.  She wouldn’t let me do anything.  I was her “Monkey”.  She would make me soup and anything else my little heart desired.  Like lime jello with pineapple!  My grandfather, a big disciplinarian a real macho man and at the same time one of the sweetest men I knew.  He would go to his closet and dust off his guitar and sing to me as I lay in their bed.  The first song he would sing to me was “You Are My Sunshine”.  The vibrato in his voice and the love in his eyes would instantly make me feel better.  As if his voice had magical healing powers.  To me, it did.  He would kiss me on my forehead when he finished singing.  Just in time for my grandmother to call us to that small round table with three mismatched chairs in our kitchen.  I always got the chair next to the fridge so if anyone had to get in there I would have to get up!  Now that I think about it, they did that on purpose!  So they wouldn’t have to move!

I can still smell that soup she would make me on days like today. 

I still make that soup on days like today.

I will always make that soup on days like today.

Those yellow walls seemed to make that tiny little kitchen seem so big.  I guess as a kid you really don’t count your worth by square footage or material possessions, because we had none;  I was so happy in that moment.  Sitting in that tiny little yellow kitchen, at that little round table with three mismatched chairs.  I was eating the love my grandmother put in that soup and humming the love my grandfather put in his song.

True love can’t be bought.  The kind of love that helps you relive a moment that happened many years ago.  That love, is such a rare thing today.
I can feel that day as if it happened yesterday…

I can still hear their voices.  The crackling of my grandmothers voice because she was always screaming at a cat or dog to go away or yelling to the back of the house to get my grandfathers attention.  It caused her to have a raspy and sore like tone.  I can still smell her as if she just hugged me.  My grandfather had a softer voice but it was a low, brassy tone.  He only yelled when he was really upset.  I can still smell his after shave and the scruff of his face after he kissed me on my forehead.

I suppose its because of those moments I choose to live in a world where that kind of love still exists.  It’s because of them that I have made it this far without so much bitterness and hatred in my heart.  After all of my lived experiences I choose to be happy.  I choose to give love freely and to everyone who comes in and out of my life.

Thank you grandpa and grandma

I miss them so much, on days like today…