A Wonderful Trip

This post is brought to you as part of Jenny Matlock's Alphabe-Thursday.  Click the button on the right to join the fun.

This is the second in a series of posts to honor my beautiful Granny.  She would have been 106 tomorrow.  See the previous post for some wonderful pictures from her life.

Today, in keeping with Mrs. Jenny's Alphabe-Thursday lesson on the letter 'W', I am going to talk about a wonderful trip Granny and I took in November 1990.

In those days I was a young single professional living in the Washington DC area who travelled 99% of her time for work.  It wasn't too long before I had enough points for airfare, hotel stay, and car rental for a really nice trip...if I went during the off season.  Question was, who would I take?  All of my friends and my parents worked full-time and I hadn't met Hubby yet. 

I called Granny and said, "Hey Beautiful!  How would you like to go to Hawaii with me?"  To which she promptly replied, "I've always wanted to go to 'Ha-wi-ya'.  When do we leave?"

Granny and I had a great time.  At 85 she was the 'belle of the ball' wherever we went.  She would tell everyone, "My granddaughter brought me with her on her trip to Ha-wi-ya.  I'm so lucky, I've never been anywhere like this."  To which everyone would lavish attention upon her. 

The bellmen would always come up to talk to her about where she'd been today or, if it was morning, to give her a flower for her hair.  We would go into restaurants and the chef would come out with something for her to try 'on the house'.

We went all over the island of Kauai.  But leave it to Granny to find chickens. 

If they knew that she used to grab them by the neck, swing them around to break their necks, and hang them on the garden fence so it would look like a 'chicken suicide' so her mom would fix chicken and dumplings for supper, they wouldn't have gotten that close.

Gran even took a dip in the Pacific.  She said it was sure different than wading in the river or swimming in Center Hill Lake.

On the last day we had lunch right next to this beautiful koi pond and I got the woman who taught me how to bait a hook and catch catfish to fry for supper to eat shashimi...with chopsticks!

That ol' Tennessee gal had the time of her life and at the point when she didn't remember many things, she would talk about that trip...and the dog she had when she was a child (his name was Ring).  Talking to her before her death at 102 about our trip was just as wonderful/sad as singing "Jesus Loves Me" with her on Sunday mornings. 

I'm so glad I took my Granny with me to Ha-wi-ya.  It was a wonderful trip.

Lisa H.