GRANDPA

This is my Grandpa Russell.  Tomorrow he has surgery again, for the third time in a year.  Each time my Mom's stomach feels like it is on a rollacoaster and rides have always made her ill.  Today  she is worried and ill.

She found out the other day something about her Dad she never knew.  His granddaughter told her.  She knew he went right to the Korean War when he was 16 but she never knew he moved 15 times and went to 15 schools before he left for the War.  She wonders now if that is why they never moved one time while she was growing up.  Grandpa shares more now that he is older.

When she is around our grandpa our mom becomes small again.  Oh, she may act all grown up and safe and secure and she is small, like seven years old small.  She remembers him always farming full time and working off the farm full time. He did not have much time for seven year old girls.  Then she remembers being a teen around him, and a busy farmer like him, really needed a teenage boy to help out on the farm, not a squeamish girl who was afraid of the cows.  She also remembers being eighteen and leaving that day for Germany not knowing when she would get to come back home. He was out on the tractor and called in on the CB radio to see if she was gone yet.  He didn't say goodbye.  He never does.

These last few years have taught her all about the lesson of being an adult child with the heart of a seven year old little girl.  Seven year old girls have fragile hearts and they don't know how to say goodbyes either.

So tomorrow we are planning on the sun to be shining, and the highways clear, because it is a long drive for our momma.  We are also planning on the surgery going well, and Grandpa coming back home soon.  We know God holds all our plans right in his hands and he holds that seven year old heart also.

stella rose