I’m sure, if my grandmother had given any thought (and she actually did talk about these things) about what she would like people to have to remember her by, she would have never thought of these swizzle sticks. But, to me they are special.

They remind me of all the times we spent the night at Grandma and Grandpa’s when we were kids. Memories of watching Ed Sullivan and My Three Sons (REALLY aging myself here), eating ice cream on the “Davenport,” and having “mush in the morning.” Grandma always called oatmeal “mush”. And she always had the colored ice cream cones that had names on them… and when she would scoop the ice cream she would ask how big a scoop we wanted and we would all yell out “as big as our head!” Memories of Grandpa walking us down the street to 7-11 for slurpies and to pick out a candy – and my sister taking FOREVER to pick out one piece of candy. Then Grandpa would open his little rubber coin purse, the one that was always in his pocket, and as he paid he’d always say, “I’m such a pigeon.” He was a sucker for his grandkids.

There was always a wishbone drying at the kitchen window from that week’s chicken dinner – waiting for us kids.

In the evening, right about dinner-making time, Grandma and Grandpa would always have a “snort” of whiskey. Sometimes it was a Coors Light instead, or a glass of wine. It was always vin Rose, and Grandma would get out three wine glasses for us kids, put 7-up in them and color it with beet juice, and we could have “snorts” right along with them. Instead of vin Rose, we always called it “vin Jose”. She always added a swizzle stick.

I think swizzle sticks are a thing of the past. Do places still use these? These Grandma and Grandpa had were from local restaurants, airlines, cruise lines, and the like.

When Grandma died, Grandpa lived there alone for about another 10 years, and NOTHING in the house changed. It was all the way Grandma left it. After Grandpa died, we divided up the house. It was just my dad and his sister, and 7 cousins between all us kids. For a couple of days after the funeral, ALL of us (except for one cousin who lives in Alaska) went to the house and started going through all the stuff, and all the memories. We cried some, but mostly we laughed and exchanged memories.

It really is one of my fondest memories – as sad as it was, it was a wonderful time. Everything in that house meant different things to different people. It wasn’t like the horror stories you hear about families fighting over the estate. We just spent days telling stories and saying, “I really remember this bedspread, do you mind if I have it?” – and on and on…. until everything was spoken for and divided up. One of the things I asked to keep was the swizzle sticks.

Someone, I don’t remember who, has the picture of Grandma on the camel in the purple shirt.

It was so fun to re-live all the memories of fun times with Grandma and Grandpa – and some very touching, sad, and poignant ones also. There are million stories from that day, maybe I can share more of them later. So, this little darning egg makes me sad. I asked my mom awhile ago to keep her eyes open for one for me – she goes to a lot of antique stores. She came back with this one.

But, it probably belonged to someone’s grandma. And someone should have fond memories of it. Look at how well used it is. It used to be entirely black, but the head of it is worn off from use. I’m just sure someone saw their grandma use this hundreds of times. Why don’t they have it? Is someone wondering what happened to it? I always feel a little sad when I see things like this in an antique store. Old pictures are worse. Someone should be telling the stories- keeping the memories alive.

So, I’ll keep this darning egg on my desk, and look at it fondly, and wonder who it belonged to and what her story was.
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