There are some people, like George Bailey, whose favorite sounds are train whistles and anchor chains. Not we two Lende grandmothers. Grandma Joanne and me. Home is our favorite place and we are both thankfully, gratefully, there. She in Ocala, me back in Haines. Yesterday on the plane from Seattle to Juneau I read that exercise can change your DNA. It does not seem too far a leap that homemaking can too, and I mean that in the best sense of the word– clean sheets, a dog on the couch, fire in the hearth, soup on the stove, coffee in the pot and cream for it in a pretty pitcher kind of homemaking– especially since Joanne and are not related by blood, and are net even Lendes except by marriage yet we both share that “gene.” So I understood completely when four days after her quadruple bypass and new aortic valve Grandma Joanne was done with the hospital and told us to pack up all the flowers and bring them and her home. She walked into her own front door, greeted the dogs, told us where to find the special recliner that had been her mother’s when Grammy Angie was in her 90s, and we moved a pretty antique chair out into the garage and fitted her sitting room with the big comfy chair. She didn’t say it was not her style, instead she played with the electric controls that lifted the foot rest and the seat (helping her bum up) laughed and said, “Oh, it’s so good to be home.” Then she asked for a cookie on a china plate, a little glass of wine, and some Christmas music.
