Labor Day Weekend, for us, is the weekend of The Great Move.
I won't go into a lot of detail about that event for this particular post. If you know me, you know the struggle. If you've been around the blog long enough, you know the story. There really is no good reason for rehashing decisions, increased mortgages, and moving trucks.
Although I will say that while driving along the interstate yesterday, a moving truck was spotted and I couldn't help but think back to that big, yellow Pinzke truck and the devastated woman who was following behind that big, ugly yellow thing in the family car.
But anyway.
What I have been thinking about was that long good-bye to my grandma. Standing on her front porch, knowing she was old, knowing how much distance would be between us, not knowing the future... that is the moment that has been on my mind this weekend. I was the last of our family to step away from her and I can still remember how difficult that seemingly small act was that particular Tuesday morning. I had her china wrapped in layers of bubble wrap- she didn't want to wait on that one, and I had all those precious memories of her and me stored, like layers, in my mind. It was if I was taking that long good-bye hug, wrapping it in its own protective layer, and silently closing a well-used file drawer.
I did get to see her again just three months later for two wonderful weeks at the end of December. Again, if you know me, you know that story and if you don't, search the labels on the left of this post for grandma and find the 2011 post titled "Five Minutes Late". It's a heartbreaker, but it's all true and it's all life. While I remember those last weeks and the special moments the Lord gave us before He called her home, it is the memory of that moving-away goodbye hug that whispers to me from time and time and takes me back to a little front porch in a little hometown.
It's been nine years (nine years!) since that goodbye. From where I sit at my kitchen table, there is a sewing machine to my left with stacks of fabric squares destined to become a quilt. That's the mark of my grandma on my youngest child. To my right is her china, long unwrapped from the layers of bubble wrap and quietly waiting for the next holiday when the kids know, without me having to say a word, that those dishes do not go in the dishwasher. In the dryer right now are washcloths- threadbare, but hanging on, that she made. I look up and see my current last name painstakingly crocheted into a rectangle that looks like lace. There's two more of those in an envelope already made by her long ago with the strict instructions to give them to my sons on their respective wedding days.
And in my heart, just like in the hearts of my kids and parents and aunts and uncles and many cousins, lives the presence of the very Savior that she was so sure to teach us all about and model in her everyday life... right up until her exit from this world and entrance into the next.
So while this weekend could cause me to think on any variety of things and the way things were and the way things are, I am reminded of the little, old woman who was shorter than me and whose house always smelled like onions and mothballs and that, my friend, leaves no room for regret.
Until we meet again on another front porch, Grandma.
I look forward to sitting with you at a different kind of table.
