Today would have been my Grammy's 94th birthday.  I honored my Grammy by making Kraft mac n' cheese for dinner.  Yeah, I know, a little weird.

You see, we used to spend every day of every summer under the care of my Grandmother.  I credit her my addiction to Days of Our Lives.  It's still a guilty pleasure for me to watch to this day.

My Grammy was a widow.  My dad's dad died when he was just 9 years old, so I never got to meet him.  Grammy always said that she finally trained him the way she wanted him and he upped and died on her.  She never married again.  I never knew her to even have a boyfriend.  She was all alone and lived to watch me and my sister.  She had a second floor apartment and each time we left her care, she would wave from her window until we drove out of site.  When I was old enough to drive myself, I would always drive away slowly and feel guilty for leaving her all alone.

When I was really young, I didn't get the impression that Grammy liked me very much.  I was always frustrating her.  Later in life, I learned that she often had to walk away from me so that I wouldn't see her laughing.  You see, I made her laugh because my fiestiness reminded her of herself.  She was so proud to see my daughter developing the same personality.

Towards the end of her life, Grammy used to tell a lot of stories.  One of her favorites she would tell over and over...and over and over...and over and over again.  I would groan inside when she started and would follow along the dialog in my head.  I had no idea how much I would miss her telling it.  Here's my version:

Grammy didn't have 2 dimes to rub together, yet she was always cooking and buying things for us.  My all time favorite lunch was KRAFT mac n' cheese.  I was a food snob at an early age.  It HAD to be KRAFT.  Period.  I was probably about 5 years old, and she had purchased the less expensive Prince brand.  She went through painstaking efforts to hide the box from me, thinking she could fool me.  She even buried the box in the bottom of the garbage.

Well, I didn't fool easily.  I took one bite and spit it back into my napkin.  I protested and called her out.  After she insisted that I was wrong, I marched myself into the kitchen and dug the box out of the garbage.  I presented my proof of a heinous crime.  I remember that she was so angry, she walked away from me.

Apparently, she was laughing hysterically.

Sarah and I had KRAFT mac n' cheese for dinner tonight to honor my Grammy.  I had to laugh when I pulled the box out because my little girl once threw up Annie's mac n' cheese and refuses to eat it.  So, she triple checked to make sure that the box was indeed KRAFT before I was allowed to prepare it.

I could almost feel my Grammy's presence in my kitchen, looking away to hide her laugh.