I have been "writing" in a journal now for almost 30 years but have never "felt" like a real writer until today when I saw the article I had written and my name beside it in a magazine. And I got paid for it! Enough to buy a ream of paper. :) Guess I better keep my day job, at least it pays in priceless kisses and hugs.
This is the article I wrotet. The theme of this magazine was "romance is in the air". It is about my Grandma, just one of the important people in my life.
The Newlyweds
That’s all you had to do was look at them and you knew they were in love. He was sitting in his recliner and she was sitting on the ottoman facing him. They were looking at each other, actually making eye contact. He whispered something and she giggled like a school girl; if I hadn’t witnessed it I I would never have believed she actually blushed. When she stood up to go to the kitchen she touched his shoulder as she passed him and he reached up and gave her hand a squeeze.
They had already been married for almost a year and I was a little shocked that they were still actually flirting with each other. Most of us lose the ability to do that in the first year of adjustment to married life. But nothing about them or their romance was what you would call typical.
You see, she was my grandmother and she was seventy years old when she married him. She robbed the cradle, he was a year younger.
I’ll never forget the first time I saw them together. I was sixteen and had gone to stay with this dear gramma for my annual summer visit. I loved her so much and living a distance from her was difficult for me, so I always looked forward to that special time with her. It was just her and me and she spoiled me rotten. Until that summer.
I had been there just a couple of days when she told me we were going to have some company for dinner that evening. She said it was an “old friend”. Gramma had a lot of old friends so I didn’t think much of it until I noticed she was wearing her best dress and a pair of earrings. She had made a pie too. By then I decided who ever was coming must be someone special.
He pulled into her driveway in a great big old white Cadillac and he was wearing a cowboy hat. I watched out the window as he walked up to the door. Gramma had seen him coming too and she scurried to the door and opened it before he could even knock.
It was then, to my great distress, that I realized this was not just an “old friend”. My Gramma had a BOYFRIEND!
I don’t know what shocked me more. The fact that Gramma was dating or that she had rushed to the door to let him in. In the sixty’s we girls were told to keep a boy waiting for a couple of minutes, you definitely didn’t rush to the door before they even knocked. But Gramma and the cowboy were both seventy and probably felt like they had to use well, what time was left of their lives
If he hadn’t made my gramma look so happy and pretty, I would not have liked him. I just knew he was going to take my Gramma away from me. Not only that, she was too old to get married!
Gramma and Rudy spent twenty seven years of wedded bliss together. They had a huge garden and preserved everything they grew. They butchered every year and entertained their families a lot. Every time I went to see them Gramma insisted on making dinner for me and my family and Rudy fed candy to my kids.
He died when he was ninety eight. Gramma lived to be one hundred and one. I think it was their love that kept them living so long because they never stopped acting like newlyweds
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