Please bear with me.  I’ll probably complain my first few blogs because I have had little place to vent my frustrations to more than myself or the proverbial blank wall.  Sometimes my husband will be on the receiving end, but his ability to change my complaining voice into a lulling melody to which he can fall asleep does not move me towards resolution.

My first memory is of my grandfather, Dandy, frying me chicken in the early hours of the morning. I am sitting on his hip watching the chicken fry in the iron skillet. I remember crawling down the back stairs backwards to get to his room. I could not go down the stairs standing yet. I opened the door to the guest bedroom, walked over to his bed and said "Make me fried chicken." He tried to pull me into bed to go back to sleep, but I was having none of it. Nobody makes fried chicken like my Dandy did, Allah yarhamhu. He died when I was nine. I miss him. i grew up in a hard way. Dandy took good care of me.