Gramma Too

Last week my cousin sent me a couple of family pictures she had gotten from her dad - the last of seven siblings in our parents generation. This is a picture of my paternal grandmother who my kids called Gramma Too. When my children met her someone said 'she is your gramma, too'. So that moniker stuck. She was an interesting woman. Those she loved she really loved. But get on her bad side and you didn't exist! I was one of those she loved fiercely and I loved her in return. As a teen I ran away from home and she sheltered me. My parents found me because an aunt called them (that was a good thing).
My sister and I spent the summer I was six at grammas farm. We lived there with my grandparents, three aunts, two uncles and several cousins. One thing I loved to do was sit atop the stump of a huge redwood tree and pick cherries from the tree in the backyard. The stump had big, shiny black ants crawling on it. My youngest aunt was 17 at the time. Once she was butchering chickens. It was fascinating to see headless chickens running around!
So the pictures my cousin sent cranked up lots of childhood memories. They made me want to go over to my storage and haul out my box of geneology.