Friday, October 5, 2018

God'a 2nd greatest-blessing after life---

 
He gave you a "special"-lady for your mother;
a saintly-angel whose own mother was "special"!
 
Z.'s Nanny (his mom's mom) wrote a 31-memory tribute
celebrating Z.'s 31 years-of-age for his wedding-gift from her.
Part-I and Part-II are presented here today & tomorrow.
 
 
Part I of II:
 
31-Special Memories
 
1. Z. Tyler had a little blue hooded sweater when he was a baby. We always called it his “cone head”-sweater.
 
2. You never saw Z. Tyler without a little red plastic bat and ball. Before he was a year old, he was able to drop the ball and hit in midair with a---Smack!
 
3. Z. Tyler had a red wagon (still has a red wagon). He got many rides in that wagon. Sometimes they pulled him to school to get me and we would walk home. I always knew when they were coming because the wagon had a “squeak”.
 
4. My class enjoyed the days when right before lunch the classroom door would open and a little blonde-haired boy would enter carrying a bag from Dairy Queen – my special lunch date with “Blondie” and BaPa.
 
5. Our first Christmas in Oregon, the Evans family and Becky flew back to Illinois for a visit. They would call daily so that we could talk to Zach. It would break our hearts because he was very homesick and would plead, “Please, come and get me.” And… there was nothing we could do.
 
6. Zach and I spent hours in our Oregon driveway playing ball.  I was the pitcher and he was the batter. He actually taught me that if I kept my eyes open I could catch the ball. We entertained our neighbor lady, Grandma “Yost”. She loved to sit at her window across the street and watch us play.
 
7. Zach would throw anything he got his hands on. And…one day that almost caused him to get hurt. We had gone to the farm where we boarded our horses. J & K Stables had a Great Dane named Adolph. Zach threw a rock and Adolph went after him. It seems that some little boy used to throw rocks at Adolph and the dog had developed a fear. After that experience, Zach never threw anything again at Adolph or at anything else at J & K Stables.
 
8. Zach and Carl were always planting something. When we left Oregon for Tennessee we brought 75 little apple trees that they had started from seeds. They planted a peach seed. Nothing grew. So that fall I tossed it outside. In the spring Zach found the old seed and he threw it on the concrete sidewalk. When it hit the hard surface, the pit split open and there was a tiny peach tree inside. We took it in and planted it. Every morning we had to measure it. It grew an inch a day. We moved the growing tree to Tennessee in the van. We brought the 6’ tree from Tennessee to Illinois in the back of the U Haul truck. We had to water it profusely for a month before the tree finally looked healthy enough to survive. It did.
 
9. We had a snack bar in our Oregon kitchen. A lot of cookies were started and finished on that counter. Zach would sit in the middle and help. He always had to be taken outside for a good “shaking” when we were done because he would be full of flour.
 
10. That snack bar was also used for sewing. I would set up the sewing machine and Zach would climb up on the counter. His favorite thing to do was push all the sewing needles deep into my tomato pin cushion. To this day, if I need a needle, I very cautiously push on that pin cushion until one appears. He also liked to sit on the floor and operate the sewing pedal. Sometimes the old machine would go too fast and I would have to redo a seam.
 
11. Zach was also a big help with cross stitching. I would stick the needle into the fabric and he would pull it through. He and I made a pillow that way - the little red pillow that sits in his rocker; the rocker BaPa insisted we buy for him when he was born. I thought it was a waste of money; that he wouldn’t sit in a rocker. Boy did he prove me wrong!! He used that rocker until he got too big for it – probably five or six years old. We also made his Christmas stocking.
 
12. In Oregon you get a lot of rain – gentle rains (mists). Zach got a little blue “shark” raincoat; it had a blue hood and a white “shark-fin” on the back. We always called it Shark-y.
 
13. One day BaPa decided that Z. Tyler needed a bus ride. So he took the two of us – Nanny and Zach- to downtown Salem. We boarded the Cherry bus and road it home. Zach was wearing his Shark-y (in the drizzling rain).
 
14. Becky had an early morning bowling class. So at 7:00 a.m.  Z. and I took her to the bowling alley. I decided to get gas before we went home. I must tell you that I have no sense of direction. Please don’t take me somewhere and think I can find my way back. I CAN’T!!! If I wouldn’t have thought it necessary to fill the tank, we would have been okay. Going to the gas station got me lost. So I decided to follow the cars – wherever most of the cars were going, I would follow. By now the parents were taking their kids to school, so most of the cars were headed for the school. When reached the Institute-of-Learning I knew where I was. Z. Tyler and I were headed home. But the whole time we were lost my little-friend was in the back seat yelling, “Look out world, here comes Nanny!!!”
 
15.  Living in Oregon, we traveled a lot between our new state and our old state (2100-miles---3-hard days). Z. Tyler was an excellent traveler. He would play in the back of the van with his ball. At night he would sit on my lap so I could tell him stories – audio books hadn’t been invented yet. In the rest areas he would entertain the various truckers with his ball playing. In the restaurants people would come and tell us how well behaved “our little boy” was. We would smile and thank them – never telling them that he was our grandson. When I heard him call from the back of the van as we traveled, “Look out Nanny, I’m coming up”, I knew it was nap time. That was in the days before car seats were really mandatory. If I had a penny for every mile Z. Tyler rode on my lap, I would be very wealthy.
 
16. In Tennessee we did a lot of house hunting. Zach always went with us. One day we were on some pretty rough terrain and we heard this little voice, “Oh-oh! Turned to rock let’s go back.” So that go to be a joke – when we were out and he wanted to go home we would hear those famous words.
 
 
Memories 17 through 31---tomorrow...

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