Dear Grandma Bessie 2

      At the cemetary where you are buried, there is the most magnificent tree. I don't remember what kind it is, an oak I think. But it reaches way up high.  I think if I climbed it to the top, I could see the whole world. Atleast I could see most of our world.  The world where I go even now to escape.  I can just close my eyes and I am back there, playing in what was the most wonderful playhouse in the world.  Imagine such a small child having a playhouse that in scale would have made any babyboomer parent drool for it.  Blue, with red dormers, a full length porch, and real shingles.  I remember that you gave Ann and I some of your dishes to put in the little kitchen.....with the promise that we would be ever so careful not to break them.  How long did it take? I am thinking about 2 hours, before I ran crying, into the house with the pieces.  No scolding, no worries, Ït's just a dish" you said. "Nothing important".  I have lived with that all my life, never once scolding my children for spilled milk or a broken dish, no matter how precious.  Did Dad build that house or was it a kit?  The boys helped no doubt. 
    Oh my, do you remember when the boys all got together because you said it was time to move the outhouse? I laugh now til I cry.  First they had to liberate it from the ground that had claimed ownership for so long.  And the hole digging... why, please tell me why was this such a local phenom? Everytime someone moved an outhouse the neighbors would come out of the wall. Why,  this was an art. You would go into the house and clean something, embarrased that the neighbors saw the underside of it.  I wonder if theirs looked any different.  I'm glad I was a child then, I might have laughed at you.  The fighting between the boys was a hoot.  Arguing which way to 'go, push, steady now.. drop er.'  Then after all was secure out you would go with the Mr Clean and the bucket. Now I know for a fact that we had the cleanest, freshest outhouse in all of the county.  Ann and I would run like crazy getting a good start and try to jump over the now covered previous cave, knowing that if we failed, down we would go, most likely to the center of the earth, all the way to China.  Oh, by the way Grandma... China is not accessable from Ohio.
        I see you sometimes wiping some piece of china in your hands with your apron.  Aprons were different then, not like now.  I wish some things would not change.  I have 3 aprons.  Not the good kind, just ones you buy or someone gives you with the only purpose being for protecting your clothes while cooking.  You had aprons.  You had almost as many aprons as dresses.  You had ones that even matched your dresses, to a degree.  They were soft yet strong, cotton that had been washed so many times they felt like suede.  The flowers or print on them was faded so, that they almost all looked alike.  Every morning you would pick out an apron to wear for the day.  And it stayed on all day unless someone came unexpectedly to visit, at which time you would hurry and try to get the knot out so you could take it off and hang it on the nail in the kitchen wall, like you were dressed for company all along.  You carried, laundry, toys, eggs, baby chicks, apples, corn on the cob, even flowers in your aprons.  Your aprons carried something else, they carried my tears and muddy faces and hands, they carried birds with broken wings and a not yet finished crochet table cloth for someone, the threads dangling from the sides of the apron.  They carried years of love and toil, sadness and happiness, they carried my hopes and dreams and for the life of me, when asked what I wanted from your things after you passed away, I only wish I had known then what a treasure your aprons would have been now that I know what an apron is really for.