What are your memories of time shared with your grandparents? 

What did you learn? 

Growing up, I loved regular visits to my beloved Granny’s house, I now realize these were special moments in time – cherished memories of some of my earliest delights: the smell of fresh-baked cookies, antique furniture, her wind-up telephone hanging on a wall in the hallway. Granny would ring up the local grocer and relay her grocery list to him. As a kid, I was amazed when the items magically appeared at her front door! 

Granny and my grandfather managed a dairy farm. She was left a young widow at an early age when my grandfather suffered a sudden heart attack. 

I never had the pleasure of meeting him because Mother was only ten when he died,

Granny was left with two young girls to bring up alone, but she never complained. She was a strong, independent woman who continued to manage the farm. She made a conscious decision to never date anyone. She always told me “Thomas was my first and only love” and she lived true to that. She always spoke of him with such reverence and love. Through stories she and mother shared with me, I concluded he must have been a very special gentleman. 

One particular story delighted and intrigued me as a child. Granny often shared how my grandfather loved to take mother along with him on his milk route, delivering door to door in the milk wagon. He’d fill his wagon with bottles of fresh milk, then sit mother beside him on the buckboard, and make his rounds. Apparently, he was a very friendly chap and became known around the community as a great storyteller. He’d take time to visit with each family, entertaining them with lively stories, and often lend a helping hand, if needed.   

Most fascinating to me was the story of delivering milk to the Guy family (daddy’s family; ultimately, destined to become my paternal grandparents.) There were seven children in the family - four boys and three girls. Granny loved to tell the story of how, when daddy was a little boy, he’d run out to meet the wagon with Grandpa Guy. One day Grandfather Thomas light-heatedly made a proposition to ‘Grandpa’ Guy. He said, “Why don’t you just give me that fine young lad there to go with my little girl?” 

Years later, mother & daddy prophetically ended up on the same hayride, and sparks flew! She fell in totally love with him and he with her. They eloped a few months later. She was age sixteen. He was 23. Their marriage lasted 65 years. They remained genuinely in love until the day she died. 

I’ve often wondered about universal laws and truth. Do you think the universe conspired to bring them together on that very day Grandfather Thomas jokingly asked Grandpa Guy to give him that fine young lad to go with his little girl….? What are your thoughts?              

I hadn’t thought of this wonderful story for decades until I began excavating the recesses of my memory for writing. Now I wonder, “What else is inside me? What other golden nuggets can I uncover? I now believe perhaps the universe did conspire to join mother & daddy together...just like Grandfather Thomas asked many years before. I’ve found writing pushes us deep within to discover nuggets of gold long forgotten.

The unexamined life is not worth living. – Socrates

I invite you to please share with me any grandparent stories you hold dear @ www.dorothyguybonvillain.com

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