Frieda

It's really funny the things you remember about your childhood. Like... smells, outfits you wore to a birthday party, crushes and memories. I wish I could bottle them up in a jar and keep them on my bookshelf to remember or at least have the discipline to write them down.

For the past week I keep coming back to this one particular memory. My great-grandmother Frieda Biedenwig. She was actually my step grandmother and I never met her. My grandmother's mother passed when she was relatively young and my grandfather re-married Frieda. I met him a few times throughout my life, those memories are for another time...

But her. She wrote us letters and always called us on our birthday's. When I say us, my grandmother has four children and between them there are eight grandchildren. Admittedly as I got older I dreaded the call. I never met this woman, I never knew what to say and she spoke in such a thick German accent I could hardly understand her.

But she called each one of us, every year. She remembered.

Maybe it's because she liked birthday's or maybe it's because she really loved my great-grandfather. I guess I will never know, but I wish I did.