Little Grandma

 Little Grandma was her name.  She wasn't my grandma, she was my cousin's grandma and to distinguish their 2 grandmas, one was called Little Grandma because she was a little woman, short in build, with a head of white hair rolled up in a bun on top.

Little Grandma lived in the country in a big house with a basement we called the cellar.  It was a nice cellar to go to in the hot summers.  Family get togethers were nice when we could all go down in the cellar and finish cooking the food on the old wood cook stove and eat on the big picnic table, all down in the cellar.  The temperature must have been 15 degrees cooler than outside.

Fried chicken, cakes, pies, watermelon, ice cream.... and we knew our cousins back then... families got together after church... all the food and fun too.  We knew one another.

Little Grandma lived alone.  Her husband died some years before I knew her.  She mowed her yard with a push mower with a basket on to catch the grass. She took the fresh green grass to the rabbits in their cages... white fluffy rabbits.. grey rabbits... and a ton of little ones. She'd put the fresh grass into the cages and the rabbits went to town on that fresh meal.  It was only later that I realized those rabbits were being raised for someone's dinner.  Little Grandma sold them to whomever wanted rabbit dinner .. and many did, for she sold them as fast as she raised them.

Later I saw that old house long after Little Grandma had died.  It was older than I remember... spookier than I remember... needed paint and fixing, but it was not going to get the fix or the paint.. Time had caught up with the house..  The days I spent there were but memories.... and nothing ever looks the same as an adult, as they did as a child.

But on my birthday every year, I get a card from  that cousin I spent those summers with in that old house. It was her Little Grandma..I was just given the privilege of calling her by that name