It made me laugh.....

...to hear John Denver singing "Take Me Home Country Roads"  while I was frantically shopping with the rest of M'ville at Kroger tonight. I have to say, it's difficult to be grumpy while humming  "....West Virginia, Mountain Mama..."  

About the second chorus, I realized that while I was pushing my cart, and filling it with sale items only that could be matched with a coupon, my mind was a million miles away. John Denver was one of my grandma's favorites.  As I hummed the strains of that old song, I was a little girl at my grandma's house in New Mexico.  Every summer, we would travel out west, and for a few weeks, my sisters and I were real live cowgirls.  Ok, well maybe we fed the neighbor's horses a carrot my grandma gave us, but there is something about the west that makes you feel wild and free.  My grandma lived out in the country. She had a huge yard that was filled completely with rocks.  If you've ever been out west, you know what I am talking about.  She had gorgeous cactus growing everywhere.  We spent many a morning with her, watering plants then going inside to have a lunch of balogna sandwiches, corn chips and coke out of aluminum glasses.  In the afternoon, we'd play Barbies while we listened to my mom and aunt and grandma gossip about cousins and aunts we never met.  The  afternoon New Mexico sun was way too hot to venture outside.  Around sundown, we'd sit on her swing, on her big porch, and dig through big buckets of rocks that my grandpa would cut and shine. The outside of those rocks were dirty and grey, the insides were sparkling with a rainbow hue of colors that glistened.  Amazing to little girls.

John Denver, this afternoon I heard your song and I didn't go home on a country road, but I took a trip down memory lane to my grandma's house.  She was there with her sun tanned wrinkled face, she rubbed my earlobes and of course we all sang for her because she always asked us to.  I miss her.  Sometimes it's nice to visit, even if it's just a memory.