I did the math…my grandma was only forty-eight years old when I was born. I gave her the first great-grandchild when she was just sixty-nine. She was always old to me because…grandmas are old. Or at least they were when I was growing up. Nowadays, grandmas write blogs and pull thirty-foot campers across the country by themselves. Not my grandma. She wore short-sleeved cotton housedresses with a belt and a hanky in the pocket. She made “jelly bread” if you were feeling sad. She swatted your butt if you tried to bounce chicken eggs on the back porch like ping pong balls. Don’t ask me how I know.

Grandma never had anything fancy. She loved her rickety old house and always said it was the Taj Mahal compared to the way she was brought up. Her mama died when she was ten years old, and she basically raised her siblings. She worked hard and loved hard and wouldn’t know what a vacation was. She went past the Mississippi River only twice in her life. When I grew up and was married with my first child, my husband moved us to Denver. Grandma warned us to be careful because of all those rough and tumble cowboys and Indians roaming the streets out West. She didn’t know the streets were paved and there were skyscrapers there.

My latest learning quest is how to bake bread with fresh-milled wheat. As in, grinding wheat berries at my home on a grain mill specifically for home use. Whole grain flour has many more nutrients than white flour in bags at the store. I’ve been baking this month with fresh milled flour I bought at The Dutch Cupboard in Columbiana, OH, a few weeks ago. It hasn’t been too hard to switch over, if you don’t count yesterday’s fiasco. I will admit, nothing makes bread like King Arthur Flour, but my Nutrimill Classic arrives today, and I am so excited to learn this.

I slow roasted a pork butt yesterday and oh, my…it was so tender and tasty. After supper and the dishes were done, I mixed up a batch of cornmeal mush to slice and fry for breakfast this morning. I have a little sausage in the fridge, and I might just bake some biscuits and make a little sausage gravy to go with them. As I worked with my hands, it struck me how much they look like my grandma’s hands now. They should be with all I put them through every day. I’ve earned every wrinkle and strand of silver.

Between my husband’s and my family, we have four kids plus spouses, six grandchildren…most of them with spouses…and four great grandchildren. It would be the greatest honor if they look at their hands one day and think…”OMGosh! My hands look just like GiGi’s.”

I think I’ll make them some jelly bread when they come over next time. Wouldn’t that be nice?

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Grandchildren are the crown of the aged,
and the glory of children is their fathers. Proverbs 17:6 ESV

***Gratitude Journal*** Today, I am grateful to look at my hands and see my mom’s and grandma’s hands in them. If I have a fraction of their goodness in me, I will be richly blessed.