“No two lips are sweeter…”
April 25, 2021
“Tulips in the garden. Tulips in the park. No tulips are sweeter than two lips in the dark.”
[As taught to me by my maternal grandmother, Grandmom Margie (Mar-Jee)]
Today is Grandmom Margie birthday and she would have been 121 years old had she not passed away in her 92nd year of life. Grandmom Margie was born in 1900 and was one of 16 children. As a young girl she walked the “Sawdust Trail” and accepted Christ at a Billy Sunday tent meeting. By the time she was 27 years old, she had given birth to (7) girls. My mother, Gloria, was number six, and is the only surviving daughter.
The historical perspective of my Grandmom was very interesting since she experienced and witnessed many events that I only read about in history books:
-the invention of the first Teddy Bear
-the first Tour de France
-the completion of the Trans-Siberian railway
-the invention of the Model T
-the sinking of the RMS Titanic
-Woodrow Wilson assumed the presidency
–WW I
-the Great Depression
-WW II
There is no special reason for this post except to say that I am especially thinking of Grandmom Margie today on her birth date. She was sharp, extremely humorous, and according to my Dad, the best mother-in-law any son-in-law could have (I think that means she did not interfere)!
I have thought of her every day so far this spring as I walk out my front door because I planted 47 tulip bulbs last October and anxiously awaited to see what the results would be. Eyeing my garden every day, I took pictures of any and all sprouting of leaves, stems, and finally blooms! Every day I thought of the poem Grandmom Margie taught me about tulips and even recited it a time or two along the way.
My last conversation with Grandmom Margie was a month before she died. She was visiting at my parents’ home before she flew to Florida to stay the winter with a couple of her daughters. I tucked her into bed the night before her trip and layed on the bed next to her before lights out. She told me about the night sky in Florida and how vivid the stars are, and how the Bible says that God knows the name of every star. And then she told me she would not be returning north unless it was in a box (coffin). As much as I denied her words, both to her and myself, they came to pass. On December 26, 1992 at 12:01 am, just as Christmas day ended, and only a few hours after a ‘Merry Christmas’ phone call, Grandmom Margie was ushered into heaven. As she foretold, her body was flown back north for her funeral days later.
Grandmom Margie always preferred we say, “So long” and not “Goodbye”. So today, from my own tulip garden, my two lips say, “Happy Birthday in Heaven and so long for now!”