Cardi

I was at Denny's on Sunday night, living it up, eating a $14 vege club sandwich. That's right, 14 flippen dollars! Since when did Denny's become fine dinning? I could go off onto a tangent about Denny's and share all my experiences at Denny's, like that time I wore undies on my head there, but the title of this post is 'Cardi', not 'Denny's'. The reason I mention Denny's is because on Sunday night we had a pretty standard Denny's waitress - unexplainable. But here goes my attempt -  short hair, glasses, tattoos, outspoken, slightly eccentric, 40 something lady name Ruth.  Ruth was kind enough to point out to me, while bringing over my overpriced sustenance, that not many people wear cardigans anymore. Flattering, that old Ruth.

But I smiled and showed her that I was making up for all those non-cardigan wearers in the world by wearing 2.  I'm not sure I agree with Ruth, but I will say that a lot of the older generation do tend to don a wee cardi from time to time. Usually with a tissue tucked into the cuff of the sleeve. Looking at my huge, custom-made clothing rack, a few of the cardis do come from my grandmother. In fact, the very last time I saw my grandmother alive, she gave me a cardi. I had taken her a package that was delivered to mum's house. Inside the package was a carefully knitted cardigan, with the works - cable knit, pockets, you name it. To me - a mix of magical elements, fused together in the land where they make unicorns and fairies. To Tommy - a hideous, old fashioned waste of yarn and time. Cos that's what Tommy was like. She told it like it was, and wasn't stuck in the past. 

I liked that about her.  

In fact there's a lot I liked about her. Like her silver hair. Watching the Bold and the Beautiful with her. The way she could make a friggen sweet Milo with one teaspoon on Milo. Her long fingers that used to hold my hand when I was scared. Her gardening skills. The bits of chocolate she gave me that I would savor for hours. Her blue fold out couch that I once tried to do a backward summersault on and couldn't move until the next morning when the chiropractor clicked it back. Her little bench-top oven that she used to make me sweet potatoes for lunch in. The fact that she used to take me to all my extra-curricular activities in her green Golf. Her willingness to accept me for who I was, and let me dream about my future, no matter how stupid and far fetched my ideas were. Her friendship. I even like that she used to make me polish her wooden table every Saturday.

Sometimes, no, actually, all the time, we take things for granted. Like our grandmother, our mother, our sister, our dinning room table, our backyard, the prices at Denny's, our washing-line, our job and even our cardigans. And it downright sucks when we don't have them anymore.