Tessa sat on the big overstuffed couch in her grandmother's living room. She had been there three days and was bored out of her mind. Her grandmother lived on a farm out in the country. There was nothing but national forest all around it. Woods, woods, and more woods. She had been raised in the city. Malls were her thing, not trees.
Her parents were getting a divorce and she had been exiled to her grandmother's place. Why she couldn't figure out. She was eighteen and knew about divorces. A lot of her friends had gone through them. It wasn't a big deal or was it? Her mother and father hadn't been getting along for several years.
Tessa sighed and leaned back, crossing her arms across her stomach. She had overheard some things about her dad cheating on her mom and there was also something about her mom doing the same thing. Maybe that's why she was here, to keep the details away from her. She sighed again and sat up.
Her grandmother wouldn't tell her anything. She just smiled and nodded when asked what was going on. The only thing she ever said was, "It lasted far longer than I ever thought it would." And she wouldn't expand on that, which made Tessa even more curious.
She had always thought her grandmother liked her dad. Maybe it was something to do with her mother. She had a lot of questions and not many answers. She hated not knowing things. Especially about her family. She was part of them after all.
Tessa heard her grandmother in the kitchen, stood up, and moved to the kitchen door. As she peeked into the kitchen, she saw her grandmother cleaning eggs. Tessa had learned the first day about cleaning, sorting, and boxing eggs. More than she really wanted to know but they were part of Grandmother's income.
The second day, she had learned about fresh killed chickens and rabbits. That was an even bigger part of Granny's income. People called her with orders. Seeing a chicken being killed had ran Tessa in the house where she had stayed. It also made her cautious about entering the kitchen. Granny cleaned the chickens and rabbits at the sink on a butcher's board.
Lorie Davis looked up from the eggs and smiled at her granddaughter. "Want to help?"
Tessa shook her head. "I'd screw it up. I don't know enough about it even after watching you do it."
Lorie grinned. "The only way to learn is to do it." She turned and went to a cupboard on the far wall and got out a board with holes in it. She spread out a doubled up dish towel and sat the board on it. Short legs held it up off the dishtowel. "Fitting the eggs to the holes gives you the size. The different sizes go in different boxes. Easy as pie."
Tessa walked over to the table and looked at the board. Four holes marked small, medium, large, and extra large. She picked up one of the clean eggs and tried two holes before she found it was a large. An open egg box had an L written on the lid. She put the egg in the box.
"Always put the pointed end down," her grandmother said as she picked up the next egg. Her grandmother was still cleaning eggs with a damp cloth and a brush.
They worked in silence until the last of the eggs were boxed. Her grandmother was far faster as she didn't use the board. "Six full boxes and three partials. Not a bad day. I have them all sold. A couple of phone calls and the cookie jar will be fuller."
"Cookie jar?" Tessa asked and her grandmother chuckled.
"Temporary storage until I make my trip to town on Friday."
Being somewhat of a smartass, Tessa asked, "Where do you keep your cookies?"
Lorie chuckled. "I have more than one cookie jar."
After a few moments of silence, Lorie asked her granddaughter, "So what do you think of sorting eggs?"
"Sorting eggs isn't bad. Kind of fun in fact. It's the killing of the chickens and rabbits I don't like."
Lorie nodded. "I understand that. You weren't raised around it like me or your mom. It's not pretty but it is a necessity. All meat comes from one animal or another."
"Knowing that is one thing but seeing it is altogether another."
Lorie smiled and nodded. "I'll keep that in mind. Your help with the eggs is appreciated."
"Why don't you have a TV?" Tessa asked changing the subject.
Lorie shrugged. "I have a radio for news. The radio is free. TV would cost me money I can't afford. Anyway, I have plenty to keep me busy. The eggs, the rabbits and chickens, feeding the stock and working in the garden. Then there are cakes and pies to bake. Not to mention cookies."
"That's all work. What do you do for fun?"
"I enjoy baking and working in the garden very much. I crochet and knit. I take walks in the woods. I read. It all fills my time until bedtime."
Tessa chuckled. "An hour after dark is way too early for bed in most of the world."
"Only in the cities," Lorie replied with a wink. "Anyway, it saves on electric and lets me get up early."
Tessa sighed and asked, "How long before I can go home?"
"Your mom said a couple of weeks at the very least. Maybe more."
"I'll be stone crazy by then," Tessa whispered.
Lorie laughed and shook her head. "Not even close. You just need to find things to keep you busy. Time flies when you're busy."
"Time flies when you're having fun," Tessa said to correct her grandmother.
"That too," her grandmother replied. "Now it's time to check on the garden. Want to come along?"
Tessa shrugged. "I might as well but I don't know a thing about gardening."
"You stick a seed in the dirt, water it, and instant vegetables," her grandmother said with a grin. "Go change into something you don't mind getting dirty while I make some phone calls about the eggs."
*****
Ten minutes later, Tessa was on the back porch in an old pair of shorts and an old t-shirt. She had tennis shoes on. Her grandmother came out of the kitchen wearing a bikini top and shorts. Her feet were bare. Tessa stared at her grandmother with her mouth open.
Lorie looked at her granddaughter with a funny expression. "What's your problem?"
"I... uh... well.... I, uh, never thought of grandmothers in a bikini top."
Lorie looked down at the bikini top and then up at her granddaughter. "I am a grandmother but I ain't old. My body is fifty two but in my mind I feel no different than when I was thirty five or forty."
Tessa had always considered her grandmother old. She frowned as she did some quick math. She would be nineteen very soon and her mother had been eighteen when she was born. That was thirty seven. Her grandmother had been fifteen when her mother was born?
Lorie grinned and then laughed. Tessa looked at her funny and her grandmother said, "You did the math and found out one of the family secrets. I had your mother when I was fifteen and yes I was married. That happened in the country back then. Your aunt Lucy was born when I was seventeen and Mildred was born when I was twenty. Your grandfather died in a car wreck when I was twenty five. Does that fill out your timeline?"
Tessa nodded slowly as she absorbed what her grandmother had said. Her eyes went to her grandmother and ran up and down her body. "You must have been one great looking hottie back then."
Lorie laughed and shook her head. "I was a skinny little girl with no tits and a skinny ass. My only problem was keeping my clothes on. I ran around naked more often than not. Robert, your grandfather was a timber cruiser. That means he traveled the woods estimating timber values and marked mature trees to be cut."
"And you ran into him running around in the woods," Tessa ventured.
"Pretty much," Lorie said. "He told my mother about seeing me and I got my ass lit up with a switch. I hated him for a few weeks and then ran into him again. This time I was dressed. I pretty much cussed him out nine ways to Sunday."
Tessa chuckled. "I can see that."
"He laughed at me and went back to checking trees. I expected several things but being ignored wasn't one of them," Lorie said and then sighed. "He was eight years older than me, which doesn't sound like a lot but believe me it was a very large gap."
Lorie sighed and took a deep breath. "To make a long story short, I followed him around anytime I could find him. We talked about everything under the sun. He came by one evening and talked to my father for several hours. After he left, I got an ass chewing about my running around naked. Two weeks later, my mother told me that Robert had asked my father for my hand in marriage."
Tessa looked at her grandmother hard. "You never slept with him or anything?"
Lorie laughed. "I was naive and liked to run around naked but I was a good girl as we called it back then. As far as my mother and I could tell, I got pregnant on the honeymoon."
Tessa chewed on her bottom lip for a few moments and then whispered, "I'm still a virgin as far as boys go but...."
Her grandmother smiled and nodded. "Accidents happen. I lost mine falling off this very porch. It scared the hell out of me until my mother explained a few things. The same for my first period."
"Luckily mom had already had that talk with me before I had my first."
"I got lucky and had the same talk with her before."
Tessa's eyes went to her grandmothers even tan. "Uh, do you... uh... still run around naked at times?"
Lorie grinned and nodded. "I'm just more careful now."
Tessa looked around at the big barn, the pasture land past it, and the big garden to the left. Her eyes went to the woods past the garden and then ran her eyes around the edge of the woods until she was looking in the opposite direction. "It is private out here."
"Now it is but there are egg buyers on the way so it won't be later."
"Oh yeah," Tessa whispered and then looked at her grandmother with a crooked smile. "I've... uh... never been... uh... naked outside in my life."
Lorie chuckled. "Be careful, it can be exciting to the point of being addictive."
Tessa shivered as she pictured herself wandering around in the woods naked. "I... uh... yeah."
Her grandmother chuckled again and looked down at the tennis shoes on her granddaughter's feet. "I'm going to water some, so you might want to leave those shoes here. Feet wash easier than shoes."
Tessa toed her tennis shoes off and wiggled her toes. She looked at her grandmother again and said, "I didn't bring my bikini with me."
