grandma | Mary J. McCoy-Dressel

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The End of the Story, Remember Red Writing Prompt

Posted at 9:38 am by Mary J. McCoy-Dressel, on January 24, 2012

Remember Red Prompt from Write on Edge. This week is PERSONIFICATION. The dictionary defines personification as “the attribution of a personal nature or human characteristics to something nonhuman, or the representation of an abstract quality in human form.”

This week, tell a piece of your story from the point of view of an object who bore witness– 400 words or less. For your own prompt and link up visit: Write on Edge, Remember Red.

Here I sit in the cold again. I’ve seen it all –cold, heat, sun, rain, and snow. But I don’t even care. You see, I’m just an old yard pump now. Oh, in my day they depended on me for water. Really, I’m that old. After the grandma sold the farm I went with her family to the next house and they only used me for my looks. The middle son, Ernie, took care of me after awhile because his mother thought I would look nice in his flower bed. She was right, for I looked grand. Ernie painted me blue. Nice! When he pained me yellow, I felt like a ray of sunshine all year long. I sat in his flower bed for a lot of years in two different homes. The family reminisced about grandma and the farm house when they sat in the lawn chairs looking at me standing there like a yard guard.

Then came grandsons. They played with my handle, up and down till I thought that part of me would break. Boys will be boys. Ernie would toss small fireworks in my direction at least once a year. Being a hard piece of metal I guess they thought I could take it. Wrong!

After awhile I didn’t see Ernie much. His kids were grown and the grandkids didn’t play with my handle anymore. One day a big black car pulled into his driveway and I never saw him again. His daughter, Mary, pulled me out of the ground and I landed in her yard right beside the garage. Often she’d sit on her porch and look at me. She cried sometimes. Without warning a few years later, I didn’t see her anymore, and I was pulled out of the ground and laid on my side for a long time. One day she appeared again and took me on a long ride. Lo and behold I was stuck in another yard. Mary had a gigantic dog at that house. Whew, I’m glad it was a female! Then Mary disappeared and something bad must have happened in the house because everything got moved out. What would become of me? Almost a year later she came back for me. Happy! I’m with Mary and somehow I know she is a part of Ernie, and I know that Ernie is a part of Grandma who started it all.

~~~

Thanks for stopping by to read this. This is not the same writing I started out with. My first one was not the correct prompt for the correct day. If you notice some of the comments don’t match this topic, that’s why. Hope it’s not too confusing. The title is for the other piece I wrote, but it sort of fits. And yes, the photo is the same pump now painted white. I feel like it’s a part of me.

UPDATE on this reblog. Yes, the old hand pump is still in my backyard and I see it from where I’m sitting right now. It’s surrounded with snow and kind of blends in, but I know it’s there and why.

Posted in Uncategorized | 10 Comments | Tagged daughter, grandkids, grandma, memories, personification, Remember Red, yard pump

Christmas Memories

Posted at 12:01 pm by Mary J. McCoy-Dressel, on December 20, 2010

Did you believe in Santa Claus when you were a child? I don’t know if I did. I remember picking out a lot of my own Christmas gifts, but that was when I was older. My earliest memory (I think) was a snowy night in Detroit. It was my parents, my little brother, and me. We lived with my grandmother then. It was nighttime and the side street we lived on was covered with snow. There was only car tracks up and down the road with nothing shoveled or plowed; the snow was deep. I remember the snow covered street because that evening, Christmas Eve, my parents took my brother and I down the street to the hardware store before they closed. They bought us a wagon. A shiny red wagon. They pulled us home in it down that snowy street through the car tracks. It wasn’t easy to pull two kids in a wagon through the snow.

I don’t know if my parents believed in surprises. Wrapping my own Christmas gifts, and putting them under the tree was really the only way I knew Christmas at my house. I did it many times, and my mom did the same thing with her gifts even after us kids grew up and left home. She said that way she could choose
her own gift. Christmas morning was never a surprise at my house as a child. Christmas at my aunt and uncles was always different. We visited early and always had surprise gifts to unwrap. I watched as my cousins opened gift after gift and were surprised at each one. I envied them. I felt like Santa came to their house and not mine. I loved being at their house, whether it was Christmas or not.

Did I carry on that tradition with my own kids? Not at all. Everything was wrapped and nothing got opened until Christmas morning. Everything was a surprise for my boys and everyone else. And they believed in Santa Claus. I encouraged them to believe in Santa. We’d go to the mall and have pictures taken with the jolly man in a red suit.

When we grew up, on Christmas Eve my brother and I always took our families to Grandma and Grandpa’s house. It was then we got to unwrap surprise gifts. I don’t know the reason behind us picking out our own Christmas gifts as children. I suppose it was something my parent’s agreed on and figured we would get what we wanted that way.

But, times changed when they became grandparents. The grandchildren had fun times at their house, and we did too. Even though all the kids are grown now and grandma and grandpa are both gone, I still carry many Christmas memories. Maybe they were different but Christmas was still Christmas. We still had gifts and food and love.

I had step-grandchildren for a time and Christmas with them was a joy, exciting, and filled with love. It was the true meaning of Christmas to see the sparkle in their eyes. When the day comes that I have my own
grandchildren, they will know surprises and believe Santa Claus brought them. Of course they’ll always have their own Christmas memory of Grandma’s love.