I had the most wonderful German grandmother, who I called Oma. My mother had to go back to work when I was six weeks old, and it was Oma who looked after me every day until I hit my teens when I decided it was more cool to be a latch-key kid. Oma was a second -mother to me. She was warm, loving and used to spoil me silly. She also had a bit of a temper on her. It never lasted long though so the trick for me was always to outrun her and then sit in the biggest tree in her garden for a suitable period of time until she calmed down. Half an hour usually did the trick. Sometimes I was able to get away with less than this if my grandad happened to walk past and I was able to send him on a recon to check on her. They say that the pain of losing someone you love gets better with time. The truth is that it doesn’t. It just becomes more bearable. I miss her so much.
Oma was a very stylish woman – she had the most beautiful clothes and handbags. Every day, she would change her handbag to match her outfit. The only problem was that she didn’t always do the best job transferring things from one bag to the next. When I say “problem”, I use the term loosely because I don’t think she ever considered it a real problem, and this quirk certainly came with benefits for me. You see, I used to offer a special service – handbag maintenance. In return for my special services, I got to keep whatever I found. The rolls of tissue (this was before the days of Kleenex Pocket packs) and lipsticks weren’t that exciting. The treasure lay in the mountains of coins I used to find beacuse she never bothered to put these backs in her wallet. ( These days my son also collects my coins although I acutally put them back in my wallet.)
The lovely ladies at Borne Naked recently sent me one to try out. It’s a handbag organiser. I must admit that I was a little sceptical but as it turns out, I’ve found it quite useful, not so much because I need to make a quick bag change every day, but because my handbag is a leather version of The Tardis and I usually spend a good ten minutes every day grovelling around in it looking for my car key, with at least 5 of these minutes experiencing a mounting panic that I have lost said key. Photographic evidence can be found below. Yes, that IS the Doggie Rescue Calendar’s Miss August 2011 in the before photo (please note that she did not have the time to see her stylist before this photoshoot). So ladies, my advice to you is get one.
My grandmother was magnificent and I’d give anything to have her back even for a few hours to talk to her. I have so much that I want to share with her and so many questions to ask. In the mean time though, I guess I’ll have to settle for the little one-sided conversations I have with her. If any of you have any stories of grandmothers or other great women who’ve been influential in your lives, I’d love to hear them…..
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