Family Jewels

Today I'm recounting two stories, one that I've heard over and over, for as long as I can remember, and one that I heard for the first time this past weekend.

#1
When I was two years old and my parents were still married, they had a set of clear glass jars that they kept on the kitchen counter, and in these jars were things like ground coffee, flour, and sugar. Philly's sister (a.k.a. my aunt) JC loves to tell a story about these jars, and because this story is also about me, I never get tired of hearing it.

One morning, when JC had come to visit my parents and me, she went to the kitchen to make breakfast. I'm sure my dad was already at work that morning, and my mom must have been upstairs getting ready or something. I was sitting in my high chair, which, according to all of the stories that I've ever heard about this time period, is what I was always doing. Truth be told, I was a rather chunky toddler, so I guess it makes sense that I was always eating. Anyhoo, JC was wondering where to find the sugar, and rather than yelling upstairs to Philly, she decided to ask two-year-old Candy if I knew where my parents kept it.

Aunt JC: Candy, do you know where your parents keep the sugar?

Candy: (pointing at the jar of ground coffee) Over there by that jar of dirt.

Look, there was a big jar of loose brown stuff on the counter, and what else would it have been, in my mind, besides dirt? I never considered any other possibility, so I never even thought to ask what it (actually) was.

Also, I love that, to a two-year-old, it didn't seem odd that my parents would be keeping a supply of soil on the kitchen counter.

#2
My great aunt Mildred and her husband Paul were hard workers. They ran a small grocery store, and every morning Paul would leave to open the store at 8 o'clock. Mildred would join him around 10 or 11, and then she would leave around 7, while he stayed to close the store at 11. The store was open six days a week, except during the summer, when Mildred and Paul would close it at noon on Wednesdays and take my mom and her sisters to the pool. (Mildred and Paul never had any children of their own.)

According to my Aunt Priscilla, who stayed with Mildred and Paul occasionally, every night when Mildred and Paul went to sleep, he would say to her, in a sing-song voice, Goodnight Millie! And she would respond, also in a sing-song voice, Goodnight Paulie! And they would go to sleep, with their backs resting against each other. Every single night.

When Paul passed away, Mildred told someone in the family that she could still feel his back up against hers when she went to bed at night. And she passed away less than a year after he did.

Isn't that the sweetest thing you've heard in a long time?

I hope there's a Paulie out there for me....