On Queens, Grandmothers, and Books {Five Minute Friday}

Five minutes.  No editing. No deleting.  This week's topic?  

Red.


Red makes me think of my grandmother, June. It was her favorite color.

It was my grandmother who gave me a love for books.  I remember always seeing a huge stack of books piled up near her end table.  Books like Scarlett.  Classics like William Faulkner, which are now sitting in my living room.  I'm a Jane Austen fan, so I'm not exactly a Faulkner girl, but I treasure the works because they belonged to my grandparents.

It was both June and my mom who taught me to read when I was 4.  Motherhood came naturally to June.  She was a homemaker in the truest sense of the word because she made the house a home.

My twin sister and I with my grandmother.  That's me on the left.

My two sisters and I would spend one week of every summer at June's house in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.  I remember trimming her geraniums with her, touring the state capitol building to see where Huey Long was shot, and swinging so high in the backyard that she'd knock on the glass of her sliding back door door to tell us to take it easy.  We would walk to the library, pick out a pile of books and read them all that very same day.  She always lamented that fact to my mother over the phone, but I know that secretly she was pleased.

At her house, we played Queen for a Day, a game that I'm sure she made up completely.  When it was my turn to be the Queen, I wore one of her satin gowns and a plush robe.  Everyone, including my grandfather, addressed me as "Your Highness" and they dare not turn their backs to me. I wore a crown that I made myself and encrusted with glitter.

Glitter that they found for months after we'd left their house and gone back home to Houston.

And then we'd do it again the next summer.

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What memories do you treasure most of your grandparents?