A Tea Party To Remember

 


I loved playing TEA PARTY when I was a little girl. Most of the time they were tea parties with pretend friends I named Chunny and Winnie. Our tea parties were always held in the summertime, on an enclosed back porch where the sun and a nice breeze came through the screened windows. My favorite dolls and stuffed animals would join us. They loved being served pretend chocolate chip cookies. So did Chunny and Winnie. So, did I.

I wish I had photos of those tea parties, but I don't. There were no cell phones way back then.

That's why I was so excited when finding the above photo of another Tea Party, not with Chunny and Winnie but with my cousin Carol and my older brother, Johnny. The tea party was held just outside my grandparents' farmhouse. If you look above my cousin, you can see a bit of my grandfather's barn. At that time, the barn was home to cows, horses and chickens. When we were older, we played up in the hay mows in the barn and in our grandfather's nearby shed. 

It did not take us long to realize the shed was a great place to hide, play about in the bins of grain no matter the season, pretend to be building something with all the odds 'n ends of boards and nails, hammers and wrenches and screws and screwdrivers at our fingertips.

My most vivid memory of my grandfather's shed happened after he stopped working his farm due to his health. A few grandchildren still played around the shed and barn. One day my sister discovered a stray puppy in one of the bins of grain in the shed. She brought it home to my mother. The puppy found a home.

Like most of us I have times when I was little that I do not recall. Oh, I have heard the stories, but I was too little when it happened to remember. When I see such times captured in photos like the one above, I study it and wish with all my heart I could remember. 

If I could remember that sunny summer day when I was a toddler, sitting in an old wicker chair at a table covered with a tablecloth enjoying a Tea Party with my cousin Carol and older brother Johnny, with cups probably of lemonade made from hand squeezed lemons and freshly baked cookies placed on small plates sitting in front of each of us, I am certain later on when back home and tucked into bed I would have waited for Chunny and Winnie to come around. And when they did, I know I would have sat right up and told them about that other Tea Party out in the country with my grandfather's big old barn in view, where lemonade made from hand squeezed lemons and freshly baked cookies were enjoyed as the laughter between cousins and a little sister and her big brother danced about the fields.



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