I am...
... super excited...
... ecstatic...
... elated...
... to announce that...
I've been published!
Several weeks ago, I read a posting on a super sweet blog that I often frequent.
The blog owner, Aunt Ruthie, was writing a book filled with recipes, stories, and ideas to create beautiful summertime memories and looking for contributors to submit personal summertime tidbits.
My summers as a child were always filled with happiness and bliss:
Running through the grass with towels wrapped around my shoulders as a makeshift cape
Chasing ice cream trucks
Diving for plastic rings in a crystal blue pool
Smelling tanning oils rubbed into my mother's arms and legs
Imagining swinging high enough to flip over the wooden beams of the swing set
Turning the in-window air conditioner up while watching movies in the upstairs game-room
However, some of my most defining childhood moments were lovingly created at my grandmother's home.
Each summer I would look forward to spending a week or two with my father's mother.
In preparation to my visit, my grandmother would always bake a lemon iced box pie, leaving it waiting in the refrigerator for me to find.
I would stretch out in the back bedroom with her cat that I had found and begged for my father to let me keep when I was only two years old. At that time, she had stepped in claiming the responsibility of pet ownership so she could avoid seeing a heartbroken toddler send away a kitten.
She kept that cat for me for over twenty years.
I would escape to the storage room in the garage, pulling all of her keepsakes out of boxes and off shelves to create a perfect place to play "house".
I would drive my grandfather's old, black truck up and down dirt roads in search of turtles and to release squirrels that we had caught so they wouldn't eat the birds' seeds for the feeders in the backyard.
I wanted to share these moments.
These wonderful, quiet, summertime moments.
So I submitted a short summary of my summers with my grandmother, which I have copy and pasted below for those of you who are curious to read what I wrote.
It was chosen by Aunt Ruthie, and I am pleased to share these precious memories with all who will read her book.
Check out her website, and if you'd like, you can order her book (which is only available electronically at the moment). I received a free copy, and I must admit...
It's really cute,
But I might be a little biased.
When I was a little girl, I would count down the days until my momma and dad would pack up my little purple suitcase, load me into the backseat, and drive to the middle point between Memphis’ sliver of the Mississippi River and the mountains of northern Arkansas. There my grandmother would whisk me into her towncar, and we would return to her home that I visited every summer.
My weeks with her would be filled with a blackberry and tomato pickin’, pear preserve makin’, sweet tea sippin’ nostalgia that I could only experience in the arms and kitchen of my sweet grandmother.
We would drive through the rolling Ozarks on our way to town, throwing our hands in the air as though on a rollercoaster as the old truck flew down one side of the mountain and strained to climb up on the other side.
We would find turtles crawling along the gravel road behind her house, of which I would proclaim the poor reptiles as my “pets” for the duration of my visit.
We would catch lightnin’ bugs in the evening and honey bees throughout the morning. Old mason jars served as my netting of choice, and we would gaze at the glory we had captured in the jars.
When it was time for me to head back to my home in Tennessee, I would climb into my father’s truck and wave to my grandmother. I would always try to hide my tears, but years later she confessed to seeing them and hiding a few of her own after each visit.
There is nothing quite like that sweet Southern summertime.
Check out page 41 if you do decide to purchase!
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