Photo: Pixaby.com
I can remember staying with my Grandma Thirtle in her little apartment close to downtown Omaha. I remember the bumpy coverlet on her bed, like a Matelesse type pattern. I’m not really sure what it was called. I loved looking at the pattern and tracing through the swirls with my fingers and feeling the soft-roughness of it under my cheek.
I can’t come up with much of how that apartment was set up; I know light came into the
Photo: Pixaby.com
room from a tall window by the bed and that I could look out that window from the bed, while I was supposed to be napping.
I also remember my grandma’s scrambled eggs. They were yellow and white and I thought she did that somehow magically because at home they were yellow. She must not have beat the eggs but maybe cracked them right into the pan, letting them cook before she stirred them. They were always creamy and hot and served with buttered toast. To this day, that is my comfort food when I am sick.
I guess it is a way of keeping my Grandma Thirtle with me; I knew she loved us all dearly and that she was on our side when we desperately needed someone. I don’t think she ever said anything to me about this directly, but my heart knew she was a safe haven.
Sally Gerard 
It was a chenille bedspread and I remember it too. On her own bed she had a more satiny comforter type with a flower pattern. When I bought my very own first comforter it was satiny like Grandma’s. I drive by those apartments – The Nottingham – every time we drive to the shop. I remember that when you opened the windows you got street noise, which was so different than the sounds we heard outside our windows on 105th Street. Thank you for sharing this memory, sister. It takes a person back.
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I could not come up with that word, chenille, to save my life. But the memory of that raised pattern is almost physical for me-I can still feel it on my cheek.
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