Gran's Legacy

Gran loved (her) babies!

My grandmother was and is my hero.

She died nine years ago today, September 7, 2002 and I miss her.  But I've decided to make sure that I honor my memory of her. 

You might ask yourself how could a woman with no famous outstanding achievments or feats of skill and courage be a hero?  Yet she is; she was a champion of reading.  As Fred Rogers remarked, "Anyone who does anything to help a child is a hero to me." Gran's my hero because she instilled in me a love of books and to honor her, I've been reigniting that passion.

Gran was a very dedicated woman who loved her family.  Her love was evident in her giving nature and all she did.  She always wanted to be helpful (in many ways because she couldn't keep still!) and was incredibly generous with her time.  My sister became deathly ill in her first year and spent a fair amount of time in the hospital recuperating.  During this period, my grandmother took me in so that my Mom could devote her time to my sister.  Unfortunately, there was a wave of chicken pox going around and I had to be kept virtually quarantined so that no illnesses could be passed on to my immunocompromised sibling via my Mom in the snippets of togetherness we had when she wasn't at the hospital.  The only time Gran and I left the house was to go to the local library, where we would check out ten books at a time.  Lather, rinse, repeat.  Cuddling up with a good book as a favored pastime was a natural progression from cuddling up with one of my favorite people as she read me stories.

In the last several years, I went from being an avid reader who would devour every word available, from the back of a cereal box to a classic novel, to being lucky to leaf through a magazine at the doctor's office.  Thanks to marrying a man who prefers watching tv to fall asleep and two young boys who keep me so busy that I seldom had time to myself, reading fell by the wayside.  However, in the last two months I've read four books!  I think I can officially call myself a reader again.

BzzAgent, a product testing network I've mentioned before, has launched a new feature called The Daily Bzz, in which you prove you deserve a spot in an upcoming campaign by doing something cool.  They are opening a campaign for the Kindle 3.  "The Kindle 3 is ingeniously designed to be everything the iPad will never be: small, light and inexpensive… Now, the Kindle is almost ridiculously lightweight; at 8.5 ounces, it’s a third the weight of the iPad.  And with a wi-fi connection you’re just seconds away from close to a million books. It’s like having access to an entire library from the comforts of your couch"  Sounds nice to me!

I don't own an e-book reader.  Until this past summer, I was convinced I'd never own one!  As a bibliophile, I cherish the smell of libraries and used book stores and turned my nose up at the notion of reading without actually cracking open a book.  But when my cousin's husband showed me his Barnes & Noble Nook, I thought to myself, "Someday ..."  I filled in that sentence with, "... when I'm reading enough to justify the expense" and "... maybe I'll receive one as a gift."

My grandmother taught me an invaluable lesson.  And I'm eager to get back to applying that lesson, no matter what form the books come in.

The last picture of me and Gran together.

For the record, this blog was ready to go today without the information about BzzAgent and the Kindle.  But when the opportunity to apply for the campaign came out this morning, the timing was too perfect and I had to tweak it!