SURPRISE!

While in grade school, when my mother was in the hospital for months, my grandmother came to take care of us.

She looked stern, but was soft-hearted.

She read to us from the Little House series, and told us about her life as a girl on a Montana homestead.

She taught us how to make and sail walnut boats in the sink.

She wore dark dresses, and sturdy shoes.

Fascinating to us, she kept her false teeth in a glass beside her bed at night.

When we came home from school for lunch, she made us sandwiches using one slice of white bread, and one of whole wheat. And she alternated soup offerings between tomato and chicken noodle.

If we brought a sack lunch to school in a brown paper bag, it was always the same–

a sandwich wrapped in wax paper, some carrots or raisins, always an apple, and sometimes, a cookie.

One day I opened my lunch sack, and discovered, along with the usual fare, a ball of wadded tinfoil.

What’s this? I carefully peeled it open and found inside a little note from my grandmother:

“Roses are red,

violets are blue,

Happy April Fool’s Day to you!”