Oreo cookies and sweet tea in little plastic cups. That's what Great-Granny gave my sister and I every time we went to her house as children. She and Mom would talk in the front room, leaving Britt and I to roam through the house exploring its tiny rooms, cookies in hand. It didn't matter when we visited; her home was a bottomless pit of oreos and tea (that was probably more sugar than anything else, just as southern sweet tea should be).
I still can't see an oreo cookie today without thinking of her, even though she passed away more than twenty years ago.
Some stories, it would seem, last a lifetime.
Grandma P. hand-sewed this quilt for Bryan when he was just a kid, and we just now got to bring it to our first home together. I spread it out on the bed, admiring its patterns and colors. I thought about how many hours it took her to piece it together, stitch by stitch. It was a true labor of love, and it reverberated deep within my soul, the place where stories of Great-Granny still linger.
I began to envision the quilt through the years and all the conversations that we will have snuggled under it, telling our [future] children about Grandma P's feisty side, about how she has dozens of notebooks all filled to the brim with quotes of scripture and sermon notes, about how we brought her Zaxbys on Sundays and she tried (unsuccessfully) to slip money in our pockets before we left every time.
Sweet tea and oreos, quilts and Zaxbys. These truly are the stories that make life beautiful, make it worth remembering.
So here's to a new year full of new memories to embrace and imprint upon our hearts, from our family to yours.
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