Marie Memories

 Every so often I have one of those days where I think about her a lot. I'll see something or hear something and she will immediately spring to mind. Following are a few things I think about in regards to her:

• She always packed the exact same lunch for us in elementary school every day: a peanut butter and bacon sandwich, a hard boiled egg, 4 Oreos and a sliced orange. Sometimes when it wasn't the lunch box, it was a small brown lunch bag. I hated buying the school lunch.
• Her love for Tom Jones. When she found out I met him once when I was doing a fashion show, she just about lost her mind!
• She would tell me "a whistling woman is fit for neither God nor the devil". I wasn't quite sure what that meant, but it terrified me. There were no other options! And now I am no longer able to whistle!
• Sometimes she would call and say she made something I really liked, and she would save me some. When I would stop by, she would have it in a container. I always said, "Can you put the container in a paper bag like when we were kids?" She always did, and wrote my name on it. I'm not sure why she always seemed to have some on hand, but it always made me happy. Maybe that's why!
• For our birthdays she would always make the same cake: butter yellow golden with chocolate frosting. No matter who you were or how old you were. Man, I miss those cakes! Sure I could make my own with Duncan Hines like she did, but it's not the same.
• She could NOT make chocolate chip cookies. Thank goodness for Mrs. Dinicola!
• She wasn't the greatest dancer, but she could do the Elephant walk and some weird sideways swimming motion when the music got good to her!
• She wouldn't hesitate to yank down my b-r-a from the back (through my shirt) if she thought the girls weren't "sitting right". Shocked me on more than one occasion, and would do it in public! But it was better than being at her house and her telling me to "lift up my shirt so she could make sure the straps were adjusted correctly". 😦 Yeah...no.
• The only thing I ever wrote that she liked was a story about a Christmas angel. I wrote it in the 7th grade.
• She insisted she wasn't a drinker, but she would always accept one (or 2!) hi-balls if offered. (Like a Tom Collins)
• She made my wedding cake, and it was the best cake ever (unlike the marriage).

Oh Marie: we had our differences, but we also had some good / funny / odd times too. That's what I'll always remember. 

Give Pumpkin a pat on the head for me 😊