When Dad's talked about it, he's explained that Grandma didn't care for her birthday any longer, not because, it being one week before Christmas Day, it'd get lost in the Advent season & Christmas preparation - rather, because, on separate years, both her mother & one of her brothers died on her birthday.Apparently having me as her only granddaughter didn't win over & heal her heart. 😂 It's not a laughing matter; it really isn't. I can say that, even at her birthday & when we'd visit for Christmas (where we spent our youngest years with our other Grandma on Christmas Day), she'd be quite happy, content, & pleased to see us & be with us.
Since Dad entered her world as menopause knocked on her door, & Dad didn't marry & have a family of his own until he entered his 30s, Grandma waited around quite a few decades to be able to say she had a granddaughter.
Memories of Grandma include things that are her favorite color: pink, & finding these & these stored in these & kept in the bottom of one of these, which Grandma had in the corner of her eat-in kitchen, which had previously been a bedroom; Dad's - to be exact.
Before the era of Grandma having grandchildren, the house she lived in had been built as a single-family house. In the general idea of these things, it had remained a single-family house - with one front door which opened to a living room with a staircase just a few feet ahead leading to the second floor & to the finished attic, which was also a bedroom.
The difference was, at a certain point in the cycle of life, this house, that our ancestors had built by hand for themselves, changed from simply having a basic setup for one family, to having a setup for two families, rather two generations, which could amicably & trustingly, live together, yet separately, under the same lock & key.
And so the change remained into the decades of my youth where the room Dad had spent his childhood growing up in, studying in, etc., had now become a room with a kitchen sink, a standard-sized kitchen counter, kitchen cabinets, a stove, & a full-sized refrigerator/freezer - with a table large enough for six people to comfortable dine sitting in the middle & just enough space for everyone to also back up their chairs when they needed to sit down & stand back up. It was in the corner of this room, opposite the refrigerator, that this sat. It was the corner nearest the doorway from where we'd enter, so we'd be able to reach inside on our way into the room, formerly Grandma & Grandpa's bedroom (& the exact spot of where Dad was born 😮), now Grandma's living room, where we'd gather with her before we'd eat.
There had been a section nearby where the television stand sat that I'd often scooch in the corner of with these. Grandma never complained that I'd keep to myself on the side of the room, she'd simply look at my layout from time to time before checking on things in the kitchen. This little section off in the corner also happened to be where I was sitting as I unwrapped my gifts from Grandma one particular Christmas.
I'd say I was in about my mid-elementary years, & Mom, not wanting to ruin either her mother-in-law's Christmas with her grandkids, nor her own daughter's Christmas with her paternal grandmother, briefly mentioned on the car ride back after Christmas Day (when I'd opened a gift from an aunt, who is also my Godmother) that, should we kids happen to open any gifts which appeared to be, or definitely were, the same as one which we'd recently received, we should receive the gift just as we would had we not just received said gift. Mom would work with us to fix what we saw as an "extra of the same gift" later. And honestly, Mom's wording & explanation were such that, the way this is written here, isn't giving her talent-in-the-moment due justice; she spoke much more eloquently (or, I was just that young, innocent, & naïve - or both 😉😂).
See, we lived locally to Dad's mom; Mom's mother lived a few hours away, across a state border. Dad's mom never learned to drive. What Mom began doing, once we kids were born, would be to purchase a selection of items, drive over to where Grandma lived a few neighborhoods away from us, & set up on her bed, which was just next to her living room, the items Mom had found that she knew would both fit us kids (in the case of clothing) & that we'd like & would actually play with (in the case of toys, etc.). Grandma would basically "shop" atop her bed as if it were a store counter; this system worked for years.
It is also because of this system that Mom knew in advance that one of us would soon be opening a gift that we'd just opened as gifted to us by someone else; it was me. It was one of these.
So there I was sitting in that corner of Grandma's old bedroom-turned-living-room, opening up the gifts she'd picked out that year, (we kids hadn't yet learned about Mom & Grandma's "'atop-the-bed' shopping arrangement") & there it was. I remember opening it. I remember looking at it, thinking to myself, "Hey, Mom was sayin'..." And I looked up, sort of toward Grandma, yet truly toward Mom (though, fortunately, Mom was sitting just past Grandma, so it was basically a 'wash') & I was wearing a smile that said, "Hey, check it out..." while my head was sort of spinning in a child-like haze.
I'm sure I definitely appeared to be more satisfied than not-so-much, so Grandma's heart still swelled with contentment & satisfaction. And later on, maybe days later, maybe weeks later, as Mom worked to correct the duplication, she explained to me about what had happened.
Those days of childhood, those days of running around, being told where to be, where to go, what to do, & how to be, they seem to us as children to be such a burden, to be so "fixed", unnatural, busy, & unrelaxed. In many ways they are, yet they can be so fulfilling too. They are the days of gifts; of giving & receiving, of cherishing moments, memories, & special occasions. They are the days when "duplicate gifts" are made possible.
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