As you can see from my art, I love grandmas. In every shape and size, color and mood. My affection for them comes from my life. You see, I had the best grandma. You might disagree, pointing to your grandma's own wonderful qualities. But to me, there is no competition.

She was feisty, sweet, a great cook, and made me feel loved more than anyone else. That is the secret to an awesome grandma, no matter how many grandchildren, they make you believe you're the favorite, the most talented, smartest or best looking.

I would go and stay summers at her house. I remember slow, lazy afternoons surrounded by acres of trees and grass just simply hanging out. I would walk out in the grass and just absorb the amount of air that surrounded me, how the sky would go on forever and the wind rustled the leaves. I would try and catch grasshoppers and butterflies, always setting them free after I had shown my grandmother. I would read anything I could get my hands on, loving the grandma book network which supplied large musty paper bags that contained romance novels, action books, the occasional horror story and westerns. I would write poetry, hang out on the slate porch,sitting close to the fern because I loved its luscious dark green leaves. We would sit in the living room and feel the sweet evening wind blow through the house on cool days. The mailman and evening papers were big events, always bringing stories, comics and drawn ads of the ladies fashion sales along with my grandmother's gossip papers.

We would be there together but do our own things, intersecting for meals and excursions to the nearby rural piggly wiggly to stock up on frozen pizza (she always added more cheese) chips and ice cream for coke malts, ingredients for her barbecue chicken and noodles dripping and encrusted in cheese. I remember the excitement of going to get burgers at some dank and dusty local dive that served the best burgers loaded with grease, treats from dairy queen and chopped barbecue sandwiches from the gas station/deli. The visits to the beauty parlor filled with sweet, gossiping old ladies or perm days in the kitchen close to the sink after the shop closed. My aunts would come and roll her hair in curlers and dye it with blue dye so that it was always the same shade of silver, never white.

I remember her smell, her laugh and how she always seemed so warm and comforting. I loved to hug her and imprint on my memory the texture of her wrinkles, her smooth rosy cheeks and the pure comfort she radiated, mixed in with concern for the evil world we dealt with especially when it came to boys. A wife to a Baptist minister and farmer, she always a smile at the corners of her mouth, waiting to be released. Her laugh was infectious and she loved to tease. We would dance to upbeat country songs including Charlie Daniels band and Conway Twitty's" baby's got her bluejeans on" . We giggled and danced on the green and white speckled linoleum weaving around the table and shaking our groove thangs. She taught my sister and I to play dominoes and admitted to feeling a tiny guilty we played on Sundays but reasoning that after 6 pm it was okay.

She taught us deal with grief by telling funny stories about people who passed on. I remember tales of my grandfather's reaction to my grandmother bumping the house with her car and how my oldest aunt always had her hair styled two feet above her head in a black beehive and wore makeup worthy of Cleopatra while retaining her tomboyish behavior. We laughed and honed her wits to come up with the best zingers but the lessons were learned, people were mourned and we learned to deal with life. Bedtime was an event with baths, powder , silky, long, modest nightgowns and the cleaning of the dentures. She always wore a hair net to protect her hair, her favorite affectation. The outfits that she wore to church and out were rarely dresses, usually vibrant, geometric silk or rayon shirts with matching pants. She always wore a girdle, jewelry, smelled wonderful and had a necklace, ring and little gold ball earrings in her earlobes.

I remember laying next to her in bed as I got older, listening to her breathing, trying not to image the swinging screen door as the alien invasion I had read about the day in some of her gossip mags or some killer prowling the country roads. I would say a prayer to God that she be okay in the morning and every morning she would be the first up, turning on the gas heater so the floors would be warm and letting us sleep in until 8 am.

She passed away three years ago after suffering a number of strokes and being placed in a nursing home. She always feared those places, telling us the guilt she felt when placing her mother in one. She lived in one for a year, and I would drive home every other weekend to meet my mom and sister to drive there and see her. It was an awful thing to watch her deteriorate until she could no longer walk, talk or eat. I remember seeing the movie "The Hours" with my soon to be husband and sister-in-law and was deeply affected by scene where the Ed Harris tells Meryl Streep that she had to let him go before he died. That resonated deeply and in my head I told Mama she could go, we would be okay, not to hang on to a dreary existence for us. I got the call that she passed away later that day. I tend not to be overly religious but I am spiritual and even if it was just timing and a coincidence, it felt comforted me to think that she was now free to laugh and dance and make jokes again.

So, every grandma drawing is a tribute to her and other fiesty old ladies who teach their grandchildren that life is fun and precious.