18

18
7/14/13

My mom’s mom was an immigrant from Denmark.  She came over to the US with her family when she was a little girl, sometime in the early 30’s.  She had a very hard childhood which she spoke of very rarely.  In her adult life she was very involved, becoming the leader of several social networking type groups, as well as being involved with the local schools.  She was an impressive seamstress, a terrific gardener, a great cook, and many other things.  When I was about 3 years old, she sewed completely from scratch a Big Bird doll that was about the same size as me.  I, unfortunately, decided to play ninja turtles with the doll, and proceeded to “play fight” with it all the time.  This ultimately led to the bird’s demise, as I eventually beat the stuffing out of it.  At the time I didn’t really understand how cool the doll was.  Looking back I wish I would have picked some other toy to abuse, because the Big Bird doll was actually really cool.  My mom’s dad was a marine in World War II, and became a carpenter after he left the service.  He spent the rest of his working life building houses for people.  He was also very into the stock market.  Every night he would watch the Nightly Business News which was (and probably still is) a program on PBS that covered the news relating to business from that day.  When my grandparents would come to visit he would want to know what time the show aired here so he wouldn’t miss it. Even though I was too young to know what any of it was about, I enjoyed sitting with him and watching the news.  We would also watch sports together, mainly football and basketball.  My grandparents are now deceased, but they are missed, and appreciated now more than when I was a kid.