Grandma and Grandpa Strecker

Recently, my cousin Amy came to Los Angeles for a wedding, and I got a chance to visit with her quite a bit as she and another friend of hers stayed at my apartment for a couple nights. It was a lot of fun, because I love having family come see me in California, plus I had never gotten much of a chance to get to know my cousin Amy because she was older then me and already had gone off to college when I was a kid. But when I did get to see her at family events such as Thanksgiving at my grandparents house, I always looked up to her and thought that she was really cool. I remember she was always nice to me and my siblings and always treated us like grown ups instead of the little kids we were, which I always appreciated.
In visiting with Amy, I found out so much more about my family and our shared grandparents than I had known before, and it was very interesting to me.
Talking about my grandparents and their farm, which had belonged in my family for years and still does to this day, brought back so many memories.
As most of my blog readers know, I grew up on a farm outside of Paradise, Kansas, and my grandparents Eva and Ernest - my father's parents - lived on a farm just on the other side of Paradise up on a hill. From my grandma's kitchen you could look out the south window and see a view of the entire Paradise Valley; Grandma would patiently watch us drive from our farm to theirs through her binoculars whenever we were coming to pay a visit. And visits were pretty frequent; many times I rode the bus to their house after school if my parents wouldn't be home.
One amazing thing that I didn't really understand or realize until after talking to Amy is that my siblings and I were actually the last in a long line of grandchildren that Eva and Ernest had. My dad was the youngest of four siblings. His oldest sister, Mary, had four kids - one of which was my cousin Amy. Aunt Wanda Kay was the second oldest, and she had two daughters. Then my uncle Al came next and he had two sons. While I was aware of all these relatives as a child, I never really put it together that we all shared the same grandparents - I mean, I knew that we did, but Grandma and Grandpa just always seemed to be my grandparents. Because we were the only grandchildren who lived in Paradise, we did see them more often than most of the other grandkids but I really believe that Grandma and Grandpa had some special way of really paying attention to us and making us feel like we were the only things in the world that mattered to them. Yes, my grandma would spoil us, to put it in other words. Yet we weren't spoiled with money or material things. Sure, my grandma always had a plate of fresh-baked cookies or some other type of treat like ice cream with malt powder sprinkled on top, waiting for us anytime we would arrive. But the most important thing was how much she loved to talk to us, and how she shared her life with us. I always looked forward to spending time with grandma, helping her tend to her garden, picking the cherries off the tree, gathering eggs in the chicken coop, or feeding one of the many cats running around the farm. Grandma always had a smile on her face and a story to tell.
I don't remember one school event that my grandparents weren't there for. No matter whether it was a music concert or a basketball game, they were always in the crowd, smiling at us. They went to the same church as we did, and we would often sit with them and then go out to lunch afterwards together.
These memories are all from grade school and junior high, because after that things changed. We moved to Hays and they moved to Russell and I saw less of them as my grandma's Alzheimer's began to manifest and grew worse each year. While I don't want to say that I "blocked out" everything that happened after my Grandma had Alzheimer's, it is certainly interesting to me that after she passed away a couple years ago, I began to have many dreams about her, in all of them she appeared as she had been when I was younger. I believe that because of these dreams, I no longer really remember what my grandma was like after she had Alzheimer's; the strongest memories and thoughts of her are how she was before. I also remember my grandpa much more in the way that he was back when they lived on the farm, always watching football or baseball games but always making jokes with us kids like pulling quarters out of our ears! My grandpa passed away shortly before my grandma and I do believe that they came to visit me in dreams afterwards so that I would remember them the way they wanted to be remembered. The amount of dreams my grandma has been in seems to be overwhelming proof because until her death, I rarely dreamed of her at all.
Here are some pictures I found in a photo album I took from my parents house a few years ago. I planned on trading them out every time I went home but have forgotten about that - need to remember to bring it home next time I'm there and swap for a different one. Anyway, these ones are from the time period I'm talking about, mainly my grade-school years.

I love this picture of me, my mom, my little sister Adrienne, and my Grandma. It was on the couch at our house. It reminds me of two things. First, my grandma was always worrying about people in the family, and one time as a kid I pointed it out to her. I told her she was a worrier, but because my enunciation wasn't the best back then, she mistook this for a compliment - she thought I said she was a warrior. She also thought it was awfully clever of me to make this comment because she had taught at Waldo, and their school mascot was the Warrior. She was visibly disappointed when I corrected her! Secondly, it reminds me of the night when my sister Adrienne was born. I used to have trouble falling back asleep sometimes at night so I would go sleep on the couch. This night, I didn't know that my parents had left for the hospital in the middle of the night, until I tried to lay on the couch and discovered that something was already there - it was my grandma! She had come over to stay there with my brother and I while my mom and dad drove to Hays while my mom was in Labor with Adrienne!

This pic is of my grandpa, with my cousin Denise on his lap. This is a classic grandpa snapshot, sitting in his easy chair in the living room with one of his grandkids on his lap. My cousin Denise and I were about the same age and we both inherited Grandma's red hair. Every year at Thanksgiving, it would take a good half-hour or more for my siblings and I to get re-acquainted with Denise because we really only saw each other once or twice a year. After the ice would break, we would all have the best time running around the farm playing all types of games, most of which we would make up ourselves.
Denise lived in Great Bend, so to us that made her a "city girl" and we always made fun of her for this fact. We were farm kids who weren't afraid of playing in the barn, getting a little dirty, and possibly running into snakes or some other scary animal or bug. Denise was always a little more timid but after a few hours with us she would lighten up.

This one is a pic of my uncle Al and his wife Jan, with my Grandma in the middle. That orange chair was my grandma's favorite chair and she would often spend hours working on a quilt or some type of craft project there. In this pic, it looks like she's about to open a bunch of Christmas presents. My grandma was pretty religious but not in a forceful way, she was just always very thankful for her faith and wanted to share it with us. I remember once questioning God's power to her, and telling her that if God really existed, then he would make my dinner plate levitate just to prove himself! Well, the plate didn't levitate but my grandma was unfazed and just said that wasn't the way He worked.
The picture at the beginning of this blog is the typical scene at Grandma and Grandpa's on Thanksgiving. All the relatives - except for myself, Adrienne, my brother Brandon, and cousin Denise - got to sit around the big table in the kitchen (we had to sit at the Kiddie table in the office!). In the picture you can actually see my cousin Amy - fourth person from the right. My Grandma is sitting at the end of the table, on the right side of the pic. I remember once my Aunt Jan told us that us grandkids should help grandma with the dishes after dinner which I thought was unbelievable at the time - Grandma never asked us for help with the dishes! Looking back, I wish I would have known better and always helped out, but Grandma just never asked us - she always did them herself whenever we came over. That's just how she was!