Today is September 1st, which is a date that always sneaks up and catches me by surprise. Not only does it remind me that summer is dwindling away, but it marks the birthday of the sweetest lady I ever knew. My grandmother, Terry Sheckels, or as she was known to me, Gheena Terry, was born Tereza Katarina Benzinger on this date in 1920 at Kerney, Yugoslavia. She has been gone for over eight years, which is usually hard for me to believe, since I can happily still hear her voice ringing in my head. Here are just a small number of things I love/remember about my sweet grandmother.
1. She always called me "ats" (thank you carrie for still doing that...i'm sure you didn't even know that i think of her every time you do) or "babe"
2. She interspersed her speech with bits of German, which I grew up believing was just the way that everybody spoke.
3. She saved her "cigarette money" for me. Even years after she stopped smoking, she wouldn't let me leave until she had reached her hand into some odd place in the house (inside a bowl in her china cabinet, behind the tv, folded and stuck under the phone mounted on the wall...) and given me however much money she would have spent had she never quit.
4. She helped instill a love of reading in me. If my mom gave me a million books, my grandmother read them all to me, many times over. Now, with kids of my own, I know that sometimes you just don't feel like reading a certain book again, but thanks to her, I do it anyway, because I know how secure it made me feel and how much I just luuuuuved it.
5. Picking me up at the bus stop, going for ice cream at Baskin Robbins, not laughing at me when we went to Wendy's for a change and I insisted that I wanted chili because I thought it was just a different sort of Frosty...
6. Every time I stayed over at her house, she'd feed me bread and butter and Spaghettios with meatballs and Tang for supper, with one of those straws that bended into a dozen loops. It's not that I find that appetizing - not now, anyway - it was her willingness to feed me whatever gross combination of food would make me happy. I'm sure she found it repulsive, particularly since she couldn't fathom eating any bread other than rye, because that's how they did it in the old country.
7. Even though I'd cry and scream if she tried to hold me until around the time I turned two, and even though that surely broke her heart since I was her only grandchild, she never gave up on me.
8. I could hop a couple of fences while going over just a couple of roads and be at her house, unannounced, and whatever she was doing, she stopped and made me feel like she'd been expecting me all day.
9. Oatmeal cookies made with love....
10. The phone messages she would leave for me: "Hi babe, I'm just calling to see how your trip was going. I'm feeling pretty good today. You know how I like it when the sun is shining. I think I'll make some pork chops for supper. Well, gotta go. Love, Gheena." Or, "ATS, what are you doing out in this weather? I just wanted to say happy birthday...."
11. Oh, she was so proud to walk down the aisle at our wedding without that cane! All of her friends were there, and I think it was the most fun she had in ages (as she would have said). Seven months later, she was gone. Stupid cancer.
12. Right? Right. (She always answered for me when I was a bratty teen and too cool to speak, and even after that melted away, it just stuck and somehow became sweet.)
I could go on and on... I just wish I could add that she was able to see her great-grandsons in person!
Alles gute zum Geburtstag, Gheena, Ich vermisse dich!
Happy birthday to you, Gheena, I miss you!
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