Besides being a saver, a sewer, a survivor, and a farm woman of the Nebraska prairie, my grandmother was a hider.
An expert hider. What she hid was unlikely to be found. Sometimes even by her.
She hid presents. She hid treasures. She hid tidbits. She hid this-n-that.
She hid it so well that, come Christmas or birthday or tax day or cleaning day, there was a chance that the hidden thing – no matter how essential to the celebration, task, or event – sometimes never did unhide itself, no matter how much searching or looking or seeking.
The end result was that sometimes when my grandma was looking for an important hidden bank statement, she found instead the previous year’s Christmas present for a distant relative. Or when she was looking for an important Christmas present, she found instead next year’s birthday present (already wrapped but without a recipient’s name indicated anywhere). Or when she was looking for a new box of baking soda she might find an important letter that she’d needed last year.
I learned a lot of things from my grandmother. One of them was to not be a hider, mostly because I know I would be even less successful at finding hidden treasures than she was. (I struggle to find even the unhidden treasures.)
Still, her blood runs thick in my veins.
So on this hot, humid, miserably damp July day, it was quite a treat to reach back into the cupboard in search of honey and find this instead:
In all their miniature glory, these two lost-and-founds are my grandmother (who hid things), my grandfather (who loved sweet things), and the incarnated babe (whose birth was the beginning of finding all lost things).
These two lovelies have been patiently waiting alongside the Pyrex bowls for eight months, ready since last December to unexpectedly brighten someone’s day.
Mission accomplished.
Breathe 