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white mountain - a pie shell appeared beneath her powdery hands. It disappeared quickly under an avalanche of fresh picked berries.

Her home was tiny and well lived in - packed to the rafters with memories and dreams. And grandpa's teeth were kept in a cup on the bathroom sink next to a special cup where his shaving brush waited while he slept. There was the bedroom with the large old-fashioned bed, fat and mountainous. It was wall-to-wall delight.

Grandma grew a flower garden with carrot seeds tossed in amongst the marigolds. She showed us how to tell when they were grown. We could pull them and wash them under the hose and eat them - right there in the back yard - between meals! Without asking!

Life was an adventure, day after day, where we shared hikes in the woods, hunting crawdads barefoot in the creek by the house and digging for garnet in just the right shale hillside. Grandma let us explore the old shed at the back of the yard where vines of flowers grew up the gnarled wood walls and the window panes were so old you couldn't see out!

Grandma taught us how to fish in the deep part of the creek under the bridge and sometimes took us to cast our lines from a stair step dam at the end of the McKay Reservoir past the Indian Reservation. She'd send us kids scrambling up the bluffs at the end of her street to pick wild flowers up at the top where the wild horses roamed or to look for old Indian drawings on the rock face cliffs.

She laughed and she sang - she would play piano and joy in the music. She introduced me to Lawrence Welk and Hee Haw. She drew the most adorable little children drawings - chubby little boys and girls with twinkling eyes and chubby toes. She often painted storefront windows with advertisements. She kept boxes and boxes of her little children drawings and I could pull them out and look - any time I wanted.

Grandma took us to the old hunting cabin in the woods where the bunkhouse room was upstairs. There were so many beds I couldn't even count them. There was a fireplace that faced the main room and the kitchen both! There was an old stinky outhouse in the back down a steep wooded path. It had a swing out front - tied from a branch so way up high - I didn't know trees could grow so tall. We could swing as high as the airplanes flew.

My Grandma brought sunshine into every room she entered. Everyone knew who we were because we were Marty McGowan's grandkids up visiting for the summer from California. We were special and important and famous!

And Grandma was my very own fairy godmother with magic in her soul.

I can't sing and I never learned to play piano. I'm as tone deaf as a human can be! I can draw a really cute frog - but no chubby toed children with twinkles in their eyes! I could still find garnets because Grandma showed me where to look. I can thread a worm on a hook with flair and no flinching. I still love fields of wild flowers and the taste of carrots pulled straight out of the ground and washed under water from the hose.

I learned a lot from my grandmother - but mostly - I learned how a child should be loved and I always promised that when I grew old I would be a Grandma who delights in children just like her.

Learn more about this author, Sharon Cohen.
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