MaMaw Corns was my maternal Grandmother's sister. She lived right up the hill from my Dad and I spent the majority of my weekend hours at her house. Looking back, I hope this never hurt my Dad's feelings. I was there, afterall, on my weekend visitation with him. I always looked forward to seeing my Dad and adore him just as much now as I ever did but there was something about spending time with my MaMaw that I couldn't seem to get enough of. She babied me, she loved me and she mothered me. Some of my very favorite memories of growing up are memories I made with her.
My Mom always said that from the time I was born, MaMaw wanted to be around me every day. She would visit first thing in the morning and Mom said that at times she felt almost overwhelmed by my MaMaw wanting to be so involved with me. I never felt anything less than pure love from her. It was the way she always remembered to buy Little Debbie snack cakes to have for me when I came to visit, the way she and I would lay across her bed on Saturday evenings and watch The Golden Girls and 227, the way she sensed when I needed to be held and she would rock me in her rocker recliner and rub my back even when I was as old as 10 or so.
I can remember Dad having to come get me on several occassions and tell me it was time to come home and he would tell me I smelled just like an ashtray. I never understood that the smell of the "Camels" she smoked almost the entire day long latched onto my hair and clothes. All I knew was that she was MaMaw and she did no wrong.
As I'm typing this, the memories of her are coming at me like a flood. She loved having her garage sales and I would donate toys for her to sale only to buy them back again in a "grab bag" for a quarter. When she wanted to avoid company at her house, she and I would go into the bedroom and "lock" the door with a butterknife until they went away. I remember when she got her new car that she had waited so many years for and she stuck a bumper sticker on the back of it that read "Sexy Senior Citizen." I remember her strawberry patches, the plastic Easter eggs she would adorn the tree out front of her house with, the Avon lady "heads" that are probably worth a small fortune now that sat in her windowsill with plants growing out the tops. I remember how she nearly had a heart attack the time we were in the Dollar General store and I threw a fake snake out in front of her shopping cart (what made me be so ornery?) I remember that every Christmas she wanted her gift from me to be a Tabu perfume gift set. I remember that she would "dog paddle" in the swimming pool but never got her hair wet. I remember that one of her favorite meals was the homemade chicken 'n dumplings that my Aunt Sharon would make.
I also remember with so much regret that as I got to be a teenager, I found less and less time to spend with her. Before I knew it, she had grown older, had a stroke which paralyzed one side of her body, lost so much weight that she looked like skin and bones and then ultimately had the symptoms of Alzheimers. One of the last times I seen her, she didn't even know who I was. My heart was broken and I wished as I do now that I could take back all those hours I didn't spend with her when I had the opportunity.
