Gracie Chapter 1

I first saw Gracie at the garden centre. It was the sort of small town garden centre that includes the local pet shop. Amongst the roses and rhododendrons were fish, birds and mice. They didn't have anything bigger than that.

It was the mice that so intrigued Gracie. There were many of the tiny white creatures in the cage; obviously the shop owners didn’t know how to tell the males from the females, or they just made a mistake with one randy male.

Three of these mice had climbed on to the single mouse wheel in the cage and were all trying to run at the same time. One was a bit slower than the other two, and the fast one next to it just kept running leaving the slow one and the one behind it to go upside down and back around. It was rather amusing.

Gracie watched this with intermittent giggles. I don’t know how long she had been there but she was still there when I left the shop laden down with another bag of potting mix.

Later I would see her over the fence behind us hanging out a load of washing.

“Hello,” I called. “Jean is my name. You must be our new neighbour.” Remember I didn’t yet know her name, I just recognised her from the garden store.

Anyway, she nodded. A few seconds later, she said warily, “I’m Gracie.”

“Hi Gracie. Pleased to meet you. If you need anything, just pop on over. We’re at number 48, if you decide to come the long way, or just jump over the fence.”

A shy giggle.

“It’s just me and my hubby who live here these days, Gracie. Don’t worry, he won’t bite.” She seemed even more nervous at the mention of my husband, Dave. “The kids pop in from time to time though, don’t worry about them. The littlies are still too small to go wandering anywhere just yet but my hubby is going to be putting up a front fence over the weekend. Just bowl on in anyway.”

I got a smile and a slight nod out of that. “Ok,” she said. I could barely hear her and my hearings not that bad.

“Anyway, I’d better go, my daughter wants me to go and identify a suspicious plant for her. Catch you later.”

“Ok.” I don’t think I got past those four words from her for about a week. It didn’t help that I had spent much of that week at my daughter Kate’s, what with that plant which I identified as hogweed, teaching Kate how to clean the house properly and babysitting my wonderful twin grandkids.

“Hogweed? That sounds like it came from Harry Potter or something.” That was Kate’s response to my identification of the plant. Her scepticism of the effects was rather funny as well. Eventually I had to show her from a book I own that hogweed really does burn the skin, but not until the next time one goes out in the sun. Unfortunately, she didn’t want anything to do with it after that and so it became my job to carefully remove it from her garden.

Between that and the grouting, I wonder just what I did manage to teach my daughter in the nineteen years she spent at home, or whether she just forgot it all in the three years since she left. She had been ready to spend mega-bucks on the latest and greatest cleaner just for the grouting between the tiles in the bathroom, in addition to all the others that she had already bought for different things. She didn’t believe me when I told her to just use vinegar, baking soda and a toothbrush. So of course, I find myself cleaning the grouting.

Then the bit I love. My beautiful granddaughter and grandson. At eleven months, I thought it rather late to be just starting to crawl but apparently it’s normal for twins to be late with these things. It did keep them out of all the cupboards for longer though. It looks to be an interesting next little while with these two.