Grandma Henke

Well how cool is this?    I have been selected to be spotlighted and receive a bouquet of flowers!    All this just because I’m the mom of moms!    Not too hard to qualify for that one!   The works already done.  Not only that, until Mother’s Day my readers can get a 15% discount on flowers by clicking on the logo to the right and using the code SPOTAMOM.  I checked out the site myself and I loved it.    I especially loved the white carnation arrangement that looked like my cute little Bichon!    The site is all about mothers (well doh, of course it is) and I had fun browsing through some of the spotlights and gift ideas.   

Of course, the first thing it made me do was think of my own mother who passed away two years ago.    I miss her like the dickens and wish I could twinkle her here for a nice long visit and a trip to her favorite fast food place, Taco Time.    We enjoyed many good laughs at our favorite booth there.    Probably one of our biggest laughs was the last time we went.   She was 91 years old and a needed some assistance walking in but she knew exactly what it was she wanted to order … a casita burrito.   First thing she did is say, “Look at this neat trick Chick taught me” and she proceeded to flip the burrito upside down on her plate so she could crumple the tortilla on the top.   What she actually ended up doing was throwing salad all over the tables instead.     After our initial shock I started picking up pieces of salad and said, “Well, yes, Mom, that is quite a trick alright.”   We started laughing and Mom started snorting (which she did when she laughed) and that made us laugh more.        I loved Mom’s sense of humor.   One thing she taught us all to do is to laugh.

Her own mother, my Grandma Edna Hazen Matheson, (who I was named after) could scarcely control her laughter.    Oh how we loved to get her started telling her funny stories.    She could hardly speak for laughing.    One time my sister and I picked her up to go meet Mom for her lunch hour in Salt Lake City and Grandma started telling us the story about how the mouse ran up her brother’s pant leg.    We’d heard the story enough times we could recite it perfectly well ourselves but it was never as funny as when Grandma told it between her gasps for breath and choking laughter.    We got laughing so hard that day on the freeway that I had to pull over to the side of the road until we could control ourselves again.     We must have been quite the sight on a hot summer day as we laughed until tears rolled down our faces.    If I close my eyes and visualize that scene I can still hear Grandma’s unique laugh.

I never did get to know Grandma’s mother but I knew her sisters and the lot of them were laughers so I imagine their mother taught them well and everyone is passing down the laughing gene.     I wish all of these ladies were around for Mother’s Day so I could send them all a bright, big bouquet of flowers and sit with them and reminisce … and laugh.      Thank goodness I still have my sis … and she’s a top quality laugher!

And now … a whole new generation of gigglers!