Whining, Wine-ing & Winning

My grandma had two defining characteristics: she loved Jesus… and she loved garage sales.

She was deeply religious. The kind where she read the Bible in Spanish, went to church every Sunday, made her grandkids give up candy for Lent, and had very strong opinions about what was evil.

And according to my grandma… a lot of things were evil.

The Count on Sesame Street? Evil.
Ursula from The Little Mermaid? Evil.
Basically every villain in every movie? Evil.

But this very holy woman also loved garage sales.

And if you were one of her grandchildren—which there were a lot of, because she was a Hispanic Catholic mom which means she had a lot of kids… who then had a lot of kids… and now we’re all 40 with kids everywhere at Maes-Fest—you were absolutely getting her garage sale treasures for Christmas and birthdays.

And the way she gave them to you, you’d swear she proudly bought them at K-Mart or Gibson’s.

Sometimes they were amazing.

Other times you’d unwrap something and think, “I’m pretty sure someone else already tried to get rid of this once.”

But she was so proud of them that you couldn’t help but love it.

One of those treasures eventually followed me home and ended up in my kitchen… a Pillsbury Doughboy cookie jar that honestly looks like it has seen some shit.

And every time I see it, I think of her.

If this treasure ever broke, so would my heart.

At her funeral, the priest said something that stuck with me. He said she was probably more Catholic than he was.

Which… if you knew her, made perfect sense.

She loved her faith.
She loved her family.
So I will always toast and wine-d down to this beautiful woman, because she’ll forever live in all our hearts.