One of those nights

I first met Ada years ago at her house. She lived in this cute little house on Main St. She was quiet and very unassuming and whenever she said something, she meant it. I was immediately drawn to her. All I had heard about her was that she was a bread and cookie machine. I just loved her immediately upon meeting her. I don't quite know what happened, but there was just something special about her.

A few days after we met, she told me that people around there would count the day that you got married to when your first child was born. I think she was thinking that Crazy and I had ulterior motives to get married. Sadly, that just wasn't the case. :-) Years later over the phone she would tell Crazy, "you know, back in my day, you couldn't not have children after you were married...." Crazy quietly told her, well, we're just not ready....to which she replied, "you probably aren't doing it right". It was so shocking, but so funny that such words uttered out of her mouth. But again, everyone wondered why we'd been married so long with nothing to show for it.

One our first visit to KS she gave Crazy grief about tipping the barber $7 for a haircut that cost $7. She knew how to handle her money and wasn't quiet about telling Crazy he was an idiot about blowing his money away. In that same visit we woke up at 10 am one morning (sinfully late for her), we were sitting in the kitchen in our pajamas...when she came back in fully dressed like she had business outside. I nosily asked her what she was doing in town, she said, "I went to the funeral parlor to make my funeral arrangements." The weird part here is that since I'm Chinese, we don't talk about death or anything to do with dying, simply because its a superstition that Chinese people have. So I immediately told her, "Grandma, you won't be dying anytime soon!", to which she replied, "I will one day, I just don't want my family to worry about it."

She had a tiny little garden and since I'm crazy about picking produce from the vine...I stood out in her garden every day and stared at the little green beans. I begged her to let me harvest some, she was quiet and said, "well, I already harvested what was ready...the ones that remain aren't ready for picking", but I pestered her a bit before she hesitantly let me go into her garden to pick some of her green beans. Not that I was going to eat them, but I LOVE picking things from the garden. I should also mention she had beautiful peonys. I LOVE peonies.

We teased her incessantly about being a card shark. She played pinochle with a group of her peers at the senior center. We teased her about winning because she's a card shark. She giggled and laughed over it. We played cards with her a lot...that is when we weren't sleeping the mornings away.

We fought over the thermostat while we stayed at her house. She liked it a toasty 80 degrees, while Crazy and I preferred it at 60...we would compromise and move it to 70, however, when we woke up, we always noticed that the thermostat was back at 80.

She would make these meals and then freeze portions of it for her supper. She would put dessert in the oven as we were eating dinner. I remember hot apple pie with a cold scoop of vanilla ice cream. I also remember her raspberry pie. Her fresh loaves of bread with a little layer of margarine (she doesn't use butter).

She would tease herself about being lazy, when she didn't get up at 6 am to make a dozen loaves of bread....or clean the house.

I remember her on top of her riding lawn mower with a red scarf covering her hair and her little coolots. She looked so adorable and cute.

I just wanted to put my thoughts in writing. I miss her. I think about her often.