Grandma, Tennis, and Fruit Cake

Even tho my grandmother passed away over a year ago, I still find her in my mind frequently. Today was no different.
My grandmother was a Valley Girl. She was one of the founding members of the Trail and Saddle Club in Carmel Valley. Some of you might have even heard her voice on the other end of the telephone when the Blood Bank needed donors.
She loved tennis. Even at the ripe old age of 90+ she would play tennis every morning followed by the prompt smoking of a pack of cigs a day. (Because tennis can be very stressful). Grandma would often watch tennis on t.v. Always inches from the set swinging her arms as if she was the one the ball was being hit too. Her tennis racket was right up there next to godliness. And was probably the most expensive thing she owned in the house. She even knew the local tennis racket repair guy's name and number by heart. Even the tennis balls she bought was top of the line. No lame cheap tennis ball was going to ruin her groove when she got her game on.

She wouldn't drive her car a night, she was afraid of mice. What does mice have to do with driving at night you ask.? Simple bats are mice with wings, and they loved dive bombing granny at night as she back her huge ass boat of a car out of the garage.
Her car was so huge she had to sit on four telephone books to see out the front window and over the hood of the car. The gas gage never worked in the car so granny would always "make an educated guess" as to when she needed gas. Which wasn't very often she wouldn't drive her car out of the village, that was her children's job. (Grandma would get lost in town).

Mostly she would drive down to the bottom of Robles Del Rio to pick up grandpa from Rosie's Cracker Barrel after he had a few to many. There she would always buy us ice cream or a huge pickle out of the wooden barrels while she piled gramps into the boat. He'd complain the whole time back up the hill about how fast she was driving and who was going to get his car home.
Towards the later years of her wonderful life, and long after grandpa passed on from this world, grandma rented a house out here in Cachagua.
She had two cats but one of them mysteriously disappeared, she was heart broken but was happy when a new kitty began visiting her in her yard. She would put food and water out for it and would often see it while doing dishes. As was no exception when I and the great grand kids were over for a visit. Grandma called us over to watch as her "kitty" came lumbering down out of woods to dine upon the food she had left out for it.
"Uh Grandma that's not a kitty...that's a mountain lion."
"No wonder he eats so much."
Oh God.
Grandma lived a wonderful life, she never forgot a birthday or holiday, and she never let a Christmas or Thanksgiving go by without cooking the family turkey dinner. She always had black olives and Frito lays with brown onion dip as snacks in her finest silver dishes in the family room. She always had enough tinsel on the Christmas tree to eliminate all visible green from the tree. After watching our drunk uncles trying to carve the turkey up with the electric knife, and recite a family oriented "grace" at dinner, we would wait up till all hours of the night for Santa Claus to arrive on the Carmel Valley fire truck with presents, never noticing or caring that Santa resemble Uncle Carl an awful lot. We would open presents from Great Aunt Bea, who without fail would send everyone a can of fruit cake via UPS. Fruit cake which was always gladly passed on to the pour souls at the church monthly pot lucks. Until one year grandma got sick of seeing that all to familiar round metal tin under the tree from Aunt Bea once again. She gracefully waited till next Christmas to roll around where she rolled the fruit cake up into small little balls drowned in gobs of powdered sugar and mailed it back to Aunt Bea in the same metal tin in which she received the nasty stuff in to begin with.
Aunt Bea never sent us another fruit cake again after that. Instead she would send us gifts that would make one wonder what long dead relative did she get "this" from.

I miss those holiday memories that always seemed to be almost like magic at grandma's house. Which is probably why I wanted to have a big family when I grew up. To have those warm holiday/family memories that she embedded in me as a child passed on to my children and grandchildren. I love you and miss you grandma.