With age fade and fall apart
Yet within my heart
Pictures of my little ones shine clear.
They looked so dear.
At six, pretty Linda, the alpha;
Sweet Annie, the omega, at two,
And to even the score,
Stevie and Tommy at three and four.
Could any family ask for more?
All four dressed in Sunday best
To grandmother's for dinner they'd go.
Linda, always first inside the door,
Was ever the leader of the rest.
Now in her fifties, she still is so.
"Is there applesauce, Nonna?" they would ask.
Invariably she would answer,“Surely!”
Why, they wanted to know, did her applesauce,
Not from a store-bought jar,
Taste better than ours at home by far?
After dinner, on plush living room carpet
The boys would wrestle, at first in fun.
Their amused grandfather loved to egg them on
Until one would wail; the other claim he'd won
And then the game was done.
Years later, when visiting at breakfast
My own grandchildren would ask,
“Did you buy donuts, Nonna, for us today?"
Smiling in remembrance of times past,
“Surely!" I would say.
We should have snapped a picture.