Decorating the Graves

Kids are coming home for the weekend, and the little ones should have fun with the almost 5-week-old kittens. It won't be 90 here but I'm hoping it doesn't rain all weekend so the kids can play outside some in the fresh air. We have irises and peonies blooming which is what we alway took to the cemetery when I was a little kid. I don't go back to that cemetery now that we have moved so far away, but I know some of my cousins manage to take flowers, and I am content with that. We used to have a family picnic after decorating the graves, but people have scattered and we lost that tradition. I have fond memories though of those days when I was little and played ball with my cousins after eating Grandma's homemade pimento cheese sandwiches on Roman Meal bread or going swimming in the lake if it was a warm Sunday before Memorial Day. If we got caught in the rain we ate our fried chicken, potato salad, and baked beans in the car along with Aunt Edna's three-bean salad and Aunt Naomi's pink apple pie. Or maybe Janet, the only girl cousin I had for awhile close to my age, and I would play with our dolls on a blanket while the boys listened to the Indy 500 race on their transistor radios. As they say, "Those were the days." And that's what the Sunday before Memorial Day was like when I was little.