Oma & Anna washing dishes together
Oma, that’s German for grandma, washed dishes with her granddaughter Anna. They stood at the sink together in the house that Oma grew up in. The same sink she washed dinner dishes in 50 years ago. But now she stood drying those dishes and watching as her granddaughter washed them. They chatted and laughed together and I couldn’t help but feel that a moment was happening right before me. A new memory was being made and will be discovered over and over again through the years.
You see this was the first day we had been back to that little shotgun house that great grandma Gin and great grandpa Ken lived in. Only now it was just great grandpa. Great Grandma had passed away only a few weeks before and we came to visit great grandpa. We all took our time passing over that tiny threshold knowing that this would be the first of a very different visit. In the past we would enter that door and hear her voice “Come on in we are in the kitchen”. As we walked in this time one of my children said “It’s so quiet mom.” Then we heard great grandpa. We passed her recliner and entered the kitchen where her chair sat empty. I bit my lip and continued into their bedroom to put down the coats and my purse. She was there in that room; in the bedspread and the decorations, on the dresser where an envelope sat with hand writing written upon it. I took a deep breath entered the kitchen and watched as Spencer without hesitation sat in the chair that great grandma once used. It was good that he sat there she would not have wanted a fuss about who sat in that chair.
The visit was wonderful. We had never heard great grandpa talk so much. He got down his WWII treasures and told us the stories…ones we had never heard before. We enjoyed dinner together and then Oma and Anna did the dishes. It was as it was meant to be. A house filled with precious memories but also a home filled with family making precious new ones.
Life continues, love continues, families grow and change, the memories will live in our hearts for a lifetime and new memories will be made like Anna and Oma washing those dishes at that little kitchen sink together.
