Life Lessons From A Cracker…(And Hand-Made Christmas Gift #1)

My maternal grandmother is still with us, and she is very dear to me.  We’ve always had a very special relationship, Gigi and I.  We used to be able to sit and chat for hours at a time.  When I was growing up, we lived right across the street from Gigi, and I remember storming across the street to Gigi’s on the multiple and frequent occasions when something had broken my teenage heart (or when I perceived that my mother had ruined my teenage life).  I could always confide in Gigi.  Gigi was the best listener – very patient, understanding and comforting - and she was always able to communicate with me in a way that made it pretty much impossible for me to argue with her without feeling like the brat that I probably was at the time.   More importantly, Gigi always had important perspective to offer.  And she somehow provided it in a way that made me think outside of myself (a difficult task at those ages, I think).  Sometimes I didn’t even realize the impact her perspective was making on my point of view until later into my adult life.

And she had the graham crackers.  Gigi would pour two glasses of milk and tear open a package of graham crackers for the two of us to share.  Gigi was a dipper.  She’d take her entire rectangle of graham cracker and gingerly place what seemed like a mathematically predictable portion of it into the cold milk for just the perfect amount of time before raising it to her lips and breaking it off to eat it, perfectly soaked but not unmanageable.  For some reason, whenever I tried that technique, the cracker always got too soggy and broke off into my lap or fell with a ceremonious plunk & splash to the bottom of my glass.  Thus, I usually got around this problem by just crumbling up a bunch of crackers into my milk, letting them turn soggy, and eating them with a spoon.  I remember admiring her ability to know just how long to dunk that cracker before taking it out of the milk.  Or was it her ability to know just how much of the cracker she could put in there at once?  Whatever the skill, Gigi had it.  I always wondered when I’d have the skill or experience to manage a graham cracker like that.    But I digress.  My point was, simply, that somehow even the crunchiest of life’s problems became easily devoured when sogged up by an hour or two with Gigi by the fireplace, dipping our graham crackers & milk. 

I’m so very grateful to have had my Gigi for as long as I have.  I’m particularly grateful my kids have gotten to know the wonderful woman that she is.  In her prime Gigi was a skilled quilter, embroiderer, and seamstress, and she loved to read and cook.  She’s also the one who first taught me how to tole paint.  She’s now slowly losing her eyesight to macular degeneration, and as difficult as it is to see her struggle with things that used to be so easy for her, I spend much time being grateful for all that she has taught me.  I hope I can pass these skills and perspectives on to my kids one day.  In the meantime, I have been trying to focus on letting her see and enjoy as much of these great-grandchildren as possible for as long as possible.  Gigi is one of the primary motivations for the first hand-made Christmas gift I want to share with you. 

(the bookmark in the picture above is a preview of my hand-made Christmas gift #2)

This Blurb blog-into-book publication is the second volume of a series that I hope will eventually occupy a shelf all its own on the bookshelves of each of our family members.  (Here’s the first, from a couple years back:) 

A true labor of love, each of these books takes me the better part of two-and-a-half months to complete but contains 440 pages full of photos of the kids in their daily activities, as well as my associated musings and journaling.  Yes, a scrapbook would be prettier, but it would take me longer to put together, would be cost prohibitive to publish for each grandparent and sibling, and would likely not leave time for what I see as my real contribution to their family history:  my words (which, as it turns out, are pretty much their words.  I just write them down until they’re able to and/or interested in doing it themselves.)  I hope that one day they’ll look back and be grateful that I’ve taken the time to chronicle the heartbreakingly cute things they say to us on a daily basis and to document the little things we do together as a family.  I hope that seeing the pictures of these things and hearing about them through the pages of their books on a regular basis will help them etch those memories into their minds that much more deeply, so that the childhood they’re living now can truly be taken with them throughout their lives.  Let’s face it:  The gift, really, is ultimately for the kids but there’s usually not a dry eye among Grandmas or Grandpas who receive a copy for Christmas.  I know from experience it’s something Gigi will read over and over again as long as she’s able.  I know she glances through Volume I when she’s feeling melancholy or lonesome for the kids.  And it makes me feel less helpless about being farther away from her than I'd prefer to be.  If picking it up puts a smile on her face, then that makes all the work that goes into making the books so very worthwhile. 

Blurb offers a free book-making software download that I find extremely user-friendly.  When making your book, you choose layout styles and background colors, paper patterns, even embellishments (though nothing like scrapbooking, you can “pretty up” your book a little if you choose to).  When you publish, you choose the size of your book, whether it’s hardback or softcover, the quality of paper it’s printed on, etc.  And you don’t need a blog to publish a book, either.  Just make it from scratch right there in Blurb’s software on your computer if you prefer.  Once published, you can order additional copies of the book whenever you like; you can even publically promote your book and sell it for profit!  I have received timely responses via Blurb’s customer service forum, and I’m in the middle of a customer service issue with them right now...  I’ll let you know, once resolved, how I found the resolution to be.  All in all, I have been satisfied with Blurb for my purposes in publishing a family history book combining photos and text.

I wish I had the time to spend with Gigi now that I had back then.  To just sit by the fireplace, chatting and eating our graham crackers & milk.  I’m proud to say I’m an accomplished dipper now, but just thinking about all this makes me wish I could go back – if just for an afternoon – and arrive at Gigi’s door with two glasses of milk, a package of graham crackers, and all the time in the world to patiently listen to her troubles and gently offer her some useful perspective that’s come from my years of experience.  Since I’ll never trump Gigi in the experience department, I’ll settle for gifting her this labor of love, this way for her to see what’s become of me since those days way back when…when I ate graham crackers with a spoon.