My grandmother died on Sunday morning.

My family moved frequently while I was growing up. I sat down and tried to count how many places that I have lived and schools that I have gone to and it is more than 15. That is a lot of houses and towns and memories.

Most of my memories are vague, a house or room remembered, a school, one or two fuzzy events.
In the mix of a varied life I do have vivid memories of the time I lived in Minnesota near my grandparents farm. I remember some of the tiniest details. The sights and sounds. Everything is so familiar.

I went to a little two-room school house and walked through the fields to my grandparent’s farm.

We rode on the backs of cows, of course we weren’t supposed to do this, but we did.

I remember the fresh milk with “chunks” of cream in it that tasted differently than the store bought milk. And the creamy homemade butter.
We played hide and seek in the haylofts, ran barefoot through the barns (much to my grandmother’s horror!), played in the pond by ourselves and picked leeches off of our bare legs.

I remember waiting for the school bus in the freezing Minnesota mornings and sometimes if the bus was late I would cry as my toes thawed out. My brother never cried but I did.

I saw cow’s giving birth, getting butchered, and gut piles with flies buzzing around them until they were removed. I stood in fascination when the vet came and his entire hand would disappear into the backside of the cow.

I helped gather cows for twice daily milking daily milking, rode the tractors, played with snakes, climbed trees and wandered the woods for hours by ourselves.

We broke chunks off of the salt licks and licked them ourselves.

It seems that we positively ran wild and it was heaven on earth for a child.

And I remember my grandmother, busy, busy, busy. Always working with the cows and milking. She named each and every one of them.

And there were cats everywhere. Barn cats. Fraidy cats that didn’t like to be cuddled but who kept the mice population down in the barns and the hay fields.

Then we moved away and I only saw my grandparents occasionally.

My Grandfather died shortly after I was married. Don and I did go visit her a couple years ago. I was very anxious to see everything and to see if it was as I remembered it.

It was.

Some things were smaller than I remember.

This is the house I lived in and the porch step that we sat on and picked ticks from the dog. It seems so small now.

And although Paul Bunyan was large he wasn’t quite as monstrous as I remembered him to be.

I was so glad that I had that time to visit with Ida. I asked her a lot of questions. I asked about all of the cats running around. She said that people were always dropping off their unwanted kittens, thinking that they would get fed milk and mice at the barn. She told me stories of when she was a little girl growing up and the cows that she had to milk then, all before going to school.

I wish I would have written them all down.

She had a full life and I trust she is resting with Jesus.

I haven’t had a chance to work on this quilt for awhile but I will get it finished and enjoy my sweet memories of that time.