Remembering my paternal grandmother

Today would be the 120th birthday of my father's mother, Edith Belle Bradley Shepherd - her birth name was Isabelle Miller, but she was adopted at the age of 5 by her Bradley relatives. She was a complicated, very complex person - who isn't?! - but I loved her and loved staying with her on weekends when I was young. She died 37 years ago - may she rest in peace, and rise in glory, and may her memory always be a blessing.

Early Weekends

Weekends with my grandmother

Were wondrous experiences:

Making miniature bouquets of pink sweetheart roses;

Sucking juice from an orange through a peppermint stick;

Weeding the flower beds and pulling carrots for lunch;

Jumping rope to fifty-year-old rhymes;

Eating “exotic” foods:  asparagus spears, sardines, kippered herring;

Believing there was a ghost living in the cool, dank cellar;

Moongazing with my great-grandmother;

Watching television late into the night – first Dragnet, then

                Hoping against hope that I’d fall asleep before

                Alfred Hitchcock walked into his cartoon outline.

[-from Handful of Stars, 2018]