Chicken Soup for the Grandma's Soul by Jack Canfield Read Free Book Online Page A

into the slinky dresses, I saw myself, a character in a long story of thread and fabric, a story unraveling into many different endings.
    My mother wouldn’t let me wear the dresses Grandma had given me.
    â€œToo tight,” she said.
    So I decided to sew my own clothes.
    The fabric store smelled of something new and barely opened. The bolts were alert soldiers. The clerks raced around armed with scissors, dripping with remnants, their mouths prickly with pins. I selected a shiny orange, purple and black pattern, something surreal that I would never find in Sears. From the easy-pattern booklet I chose a fitted waist and plunging neck.
    At home, I rolled out the fabric and stared. I could not remember what to do, so I dialed Grandma.
    I heard the murmur of television in the background while she thought about my questions.
    â€œFirst make yourself a nice cup of tea,” she said, her voice halting and dusty. “While you drink it, see yourself wearing this dress. Then, take your scissors and cut.”
    I found some Lipton’s behind my mother’s Nescafe. As I sipped, I saw myself sauntering through the hallway at school, a vision of color and style. Boys paused by their lockers and watched silently as I walked past.
    But once I broke into the cloth, my scissors bucked, the fabric fought. Once I inserted the needle, insinuated the thread, my seams squirmed and refused to lie flat. Despite all my work, my dress wore a prissy, puckered look. Then I saw my mistake: when I had gathered the fabric, I’d yanked the thread too tightly. The dress had no room to stretch and grow.
    A month after Grandma died, I received a battered cardboard box filled with scraps of material: a length from a dotted swiss I’d worn when I was three, a scrap from a fiesta dress I’d swirled in at age five, forest green velveteen from my cousin’s wedding. I fingered each remnant of cloth and imagined the vest I might make. I knew just how to do it: I would sit in front of the light gathering and piercing, gathering and binding, gathering and, finally, letting go.

Deborah Shouse
    A Legacy of Love
    I t would be more honorable to our distinguished ancestors to praise them in words less, but in deed to imitate them more.
    Horace Mann
    â€œWho’s that, Grandma?” Four-year-old Taylor pointed to a delicate gold photo frame I’d carefully placed atop my new oak desk. I pulled my oldest grandchild into my lap so he could peer closer at the face of the woman smiling back at us. “That’s Mam-maw Gladys,” I replied.
    I reached for the picture, my fingers carefully tracing the outline of the soft countenance returning my gaze . . . her clear blue eyes, the wrinkle lines that creased her forehead and the soft smile that always brought me peace.
    My mind filled with remembrances of my mother. Always the peacemaker, it seemed she never made anyone angry. Even though she was barely able physically, she baby-sat my young daughter so I could work. She always made time for her grandchildren. When she wasn’t with them, she was making something for them with her hands.
    Then her illness progressed. She was in the hospital for three weeks, suffering complications from chronic lymphoma. The doctor wanted to experiment with a simple operation that might give her another year of life. She agreed so she could be around to greet her long-awaited first great-grandchild.
    After the surgery failed, she had to depend upon a respirator to breathe. When the doctors determined she wasn’t going to breathe on her own, the respirator was removed and she was moved to a private room. Mom died there the next day, exactly a month before Taylor’s birth.
    Still grieving, I traveled five hundred miles to be with my family and welcome my new grandson.
    A few days later, my daughter asked me to sit with Taylor while she visited her doctor. As I rocked him and cradled him in my arms, suddenly I realized that my love for