Taking a step back.

I forgot to mention a big part in my childhood. So I'm skipping back to tell you.



My grandpa and I had been really close in the few months that we lived with them. We would sit on my living room floor together. Sometimes he would read to me and sometimes I would "teach him how to color". It was great. When my sisters would be taking naps or whatever, I'd be with Grandpa.

Then they decided to leave us. They moved to all the way to the big thunderstorms and snow-less winters that made up Florida. We went to visit them almost every single summer. The summers we didn't go see them, they came to see us. I don't remember much about going down to their house except for sitting on their couch listening to my grandpa read Brear Rabbit and the Tar Baby and eating "barbecue" and Grandma's famous blueberry pancakes. The memories of their visits up here, though, I remember clearly.

They would come and park their red pickup truck in the grass behind our basketball hoop. The tradition soon came that my grandma, Megan, and me would sit down at the kitchen table and color. I always admired my grandma's pictures and wished that some day I could color as good as she could. She told me that her secret was that she colored in small circles instead of lines.

Then, Megan and I would go into the living room where Grandpa would be sitting, waiting for us. We would sit next to him on the couch. My grandpa always had this bit of neck that hung off and resembled a turkey. He would always wiggle it back and forth with his hand and gobble. He occasionally let us wiggle it. Then, we'd use both hands to help him get up and off the couch. We would then bring him into our bedroom where we would sit. He would sometimes read us stories, but mostly he would tell us what it was like in Florida and what was happening with our various aunts and uncles and cousins who live down there with them. We would tell him how it's been in Illinois and tell him about our friends and other stuff that would happen.

We would then pull out the table and bring out extra chairs and eat a nice meal. We would sit ariound the table talking for a while before they would have to get up and start their long journey back to Florida. I miss those visits. My grandparents both got too old to drive up here, and my grandma was afriad of flying, so they stopped coming up. The last time they did, I was five or six years old. I miss it so much.