A Celebration of People I Love

   June 25th has always been a big day in the Ward house, both for good memories and some sorrowful ones.  We'll start with the good.

   Every June 25th, we celebrate Lydia's Baptismal Birthday by lighting her candle during dinner.  Lanie helped her out a bit.  I love Baptismal birthdays - the stress of birthday parties is missing, and instead what remains is just a small celebration of a very big day when our children were baptized into God's family. A great day!

   More good memories.  Right before Lanie was born in 2008 on this same day, June 25th, I got a phone call from my mom.  I had a new nephew! My sister had Taylor John that morning and we would be driving to Oklahoma (me 7 months pregnant, argh) to see him and the rest of the family.  Our new baby (who we didn't know was a boy or a girl at the time) would have a cousin the same age. We were really excited. Can't believe he's already turning 4.

    And unfortunately, this is where the sad news comes in.  Later that day, I get another phone call - from my mom which I thought was an update on my sister, but instead it was about my grandmother, Florene Oleta.   She had passed away that day unexpectedly.  I recall screaming into the phone, running up the stairs and falling into my pillow.  Elijah was only 4 and a bit scared.  Lydia was 2 and didn't understand.  My grandmother had been in a lot of pain for a long while, but I was still devastated to hear the news.  The Lord giveth and he taketh away. 

     I moved to Texas in 1998 for many reasons, and one of those was to be able to see my grandmother more often.  She lived in Texas City and I really did not know her growing up.  I knew she sold Avon because I got an Avon perfume bottle for every birthday, and I knew she LOVED sweet tea, and I knew she wore panty hose and heels until her damaged and arthritic feet wouldn't let her anymore, but I didn't know her, not really.

    Getting to know her in my late twenties and thirties was very special.  Before I married, I visited her often, and then after I married and we had children, I enjoyed bringing them to see her, mainly because she thought my kids were just the smartest :-) kids she knew.  They called her Great Grandma Float (in place of Florene) which she always thought was the sweetest thing.  She cracked me up with her scratchy yelling at my cousins (who still lived with her), her complaining about her aches and pains, her honest thoughts about other family members, and her stories about her youth. Had I heard them as a young girl, I wouldn't have paid much attention.  As an adult, I cherished them.  We would sit at her little table (which I now have in storage waiting for the day I have a room to put them in) in her little green kitchen and she would talk, and talk, and talk. It was always a little hard to leave.

    Of course, my biggest regret is that she didn't get to meet Lanie when she was born just a month and half later.  She would have gotten the biggest kick out of her, I just know it.  I think they would have been kindred spirits. So it seemed just the perfect way to remember her that August day when Elaine was born that her middle name be Oleta.  And I could get all sappy about this connection between my new daughter and her great-grandmother, but here's the funniest part.  My grandmother never liked her middle name, never, and she would have probably guffawed at me using it. But I always loved it, and Lanie loves it, so I guess I got the last word.

    And so every June 25th we celebrate a Baptism, a Birthday, and dear Great Grandma Float. 

4 generations - mom, grandma, me and Lydia on grandma's 89th birthday