pic of the day - cookoo

This cookoo clock hung in my grandparents home when my dad was a kid. As a child, it was one of my most favorite things about going to visit their house. It hung in the hallway just outside my bedroom, and it was always my goal to try to stay awake until midnight so I could see it cookoo 12 times! Watching my grandpa reset the clock by pulling the weights and chains was fascinating! And the weights shaped like pinecones...WOW! The WOW! factor was only heightened when I was threatened within an inch of my life not to play with them...they made such a great forest for my Barbie dolls. It was a huge temptation for a little kid!!!!! I loved that cookoo clock!

Tonight, after years of wear and tear and a long visit with our clockmaker friend, the cookoo clock has been restored and was hung for the first time in my parent's home. Silly though it may sound, it was as if someone lost had come home. Hearing that cookoo brought back so many memories of that house, the summers spent there, my bedroom, riding my bike on their street, watching soap operas with my grandma, playing kickball and hide-n-seek with my cousin and the neighbood kids who became our friends, trying to teach my him to ride his bike without training wheels because we got to go to Dairy Queeen if he did, and waiting for my grandpa to get home from work...that was the highlight of the day.

My grandpa's been gone a little over a year now. I miss him every single day. Like the cookoo clock, he was so silly and funny. He had a way of making you want to stay up to midnight so you could soak up as much of him as you could. He was steady though and as dependable as the strike of a clock. You always knew where you stood with him and for me, he was my forest...strong, wise,and protecting. He was a fixture in our family. Some may think I need to get a life, but hearing that cookoo will be a highlight of my day.