I recently visited my nanny. She's this tiny thing of a woman, honestly she's 5'1 and weighs 80-90 pounds. She's British and I swear she lives off cookies and tea. In the winter her life is made up of knitting blankets, baby outfits and mittens which donates to the local hospitals and churchs for Christmas and reading cheesy vintage romance novels.
Every time I go to see her, she ends up giving me more of her stuff which consists of glamorous vintage treasures. This time she remembered my saying that I needed a shall to wear with a new dress that I had bought so she had a gorgeous lace one with a butterfly in the center wrapped up for me to take home.
She also remembered me looking for a gold necklace and thus brought out her entire jewelry collection so I could see if I could find something I liked. She ended up telling me the story behind each and every single piece and gave me a couple pieces to take home with me. One was a charm bracelet that she got when she turned 25. That used to be a big social birthday in England, where you were formally introduced to society. It's silver and has an anchor, a pirate ship, a key and an elephant attached to it. She also knows that I have this love for antique keys and thus gave me a pin in the shape of a key which has a heart dangling from the end. I plan to get it tattooed on me next month.
We also went through all of her old photo albums and found pictures of her when she was as young as 15. All black and white, I chose a bunch to borrow. There is one of her when she's about 18 and she's standing with a bike that I want to keep to get tattooed when I find an artist that would do it justice. In the photo album there was this scrap piece of paper, she didn't remember where it was from but it read:
DAY DREAM
And on her lover's arm she leant,
and around he waist she felt it fold,
and far across the hills they went
In that new world which is the old-
And o'er the hills and far away
Beyond their utmost purple rim,
Beyond the night, across the day,
Thro'all the world she followed him
-Alfred, Lord Tennyson 1809-1892
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atruse:
man.. that would be like me having a grandpa that gave me playboy mags!!! thats so cool haha
roshambo74:
Moments like this are great. Sadly I don't have any of my grandparents around anymore but I will always have the fond memories of when they were around. We now carry on most of the Christmas traditions that were started by them when I was a kid. I always got a tree ornament with the year on it, an amaryllis and some poppycock. We get an ornament every year and plant an amaryllis. Sometimes it's the small simple gifts that mean the most. It still amazes me when I think of all the changes in the world many grandparents have gone through from the wars to the invention of TV and all the other electronic stuff we rely upon so much today. It will be interesting to see where we all are and what we use 50 years from now.