Just Keep Talkin': My Grandmother Hattie

We recently went to Florida to visit family and have a memorial service to remember my grandmother Hattie who had passed away in June at the age of 89. She was cremated and did not want a formal funeral service, just for the family to get together and remember her. We gathered at her condo at Ft. Walton Beach and had a great time catching up with the cousins, meeting their spouses for the first time, and celebrating Hattie's life and my birthday and my cousin Waverly's birthday, who was born a day before me (but many years later)! I'm the oldest grandchild and Waverly is the youngest, there is a 19 year difference.

I never called Hattie "Grandma" or "Grandmother", she told my mom when I was born she wasn't old enough to be a grandmother yet, even though she was older than my other grandmother who I call Granny, so I could call her Hattie. That's what I called her! My grandfather passed away when I was 7 and Hattie remarried a few years later and his last name was Wood but everyone called him Woodie. So instead of Grandmother and Grandfather, I called them Hattie and Woodie.

Since Woodie was a retired Major in the Air Force, he and Hattie could get on military flights for cheap. They flew all around the world, you name it, they went there! I asked her where the best place was she had ever traveled to and she said "Barbados" (now you know).

I always thought Hattie would have been great as a British grandmother. Want to be strolled around in an English pram? Hattie did it with me! Feel the need to dress your baby in a two piece Irish linen jacket and pants ensemble? Hattie hooked me up with this outfit for Camden! Sorry about the bad quality photo. Totally impractical but still so classic and traditional. She was proper, loved the Victorian era, and was very traditional.

The day Tim and I got married, she brought her grandmother's lace parasol and lace gloves for me to carry. I didn't carry the parasol, as seen in the photo, but I carried the gloves around my bouquet.

Hattie loved to walk down the beach, down to a barrier island tracking station dome that was on the beach. It was removed after Hurricane Ivan in 2007, BTW. Anyway, she would tell Woodie "I'm going to walk to the dome" and he'd always say "And back" and she'd laugh and say "Of COURSE it's to the dome AND back!" So now when I'm walking anywhere or Tim says "Let's go down to the Goodwill in Charlotte" I think to myself "and back!"

My cousin Glynn took a walk down the beach the day we all got together at Hattie's condo. He says it best: