A little note about Grandmom

Two special hands

Lately I've been spending a lot of quality time with my Grandmother. Sadly, she has been a bit depressed this past week. She says these cold winter days make her body ache and her head cloudy.
I feel for her--she lives alone in the same house she raised her family. Her first steps out of bed each day remind her that she lives a life accompanied by chronic back pain...and her stiff fingers are a product of living many years with arthritis. I wonder if she ever looks at her hands and remembers what they use to look like...
Does a person of old age even want to think about how their bodies use to be?

She doesn't complain much- but when she does complain it typically is about those two things.
I like to tell her that her pain is evidence of all the love and hard work she did over the years. She laughs at me when I say this....I'm sure in her head she is thinking....'oh girl- nothing can make the feeling of being stuck feel any better'.... but how else do I make her feel better?

Anyway- she has been stressing about what to give her eight grand children for Christmas.  She doesn't have much money and she can't walk around a store easily looking for gifts. So I decided she should write down all her recipes and  I would make up a cook book to give to everyone. We could call it Betty's Cookbook! She wasn't exactly as enthusiastic as I was about the gift...she actually kind of laughed at me! I don't think she could actually visualize this book coming together.

It was cute, though...a couple days later I came by to visit her and she handed me 10 recipes that she hand written. I was so proud of her and happy that she really thought about the idea and is taking it all to heart.  She is in the process of writing more down for me.

So, a recipe book it is! Now-I just have to figure out how to pull it off in time for Christmas!