My Granny Mom (my dad's mom) had like, six billion grandkids, and great-grandkids so in the interest of her sanity and survival, she always kept two things on hand at her house: random toys, and ice cream. Yeah, Granny Mom! And in that small stockpile of random toys was a U.S. map puzzle. That thing survived all of us grandkids for years which is amazing. It wasn't a terribly exciting toy. It was more like an old stand-by kind of toy. Some of the other toys would come and go because they would "accidentally" get taken home by some of my cousins, lol, but the puzzle long remained. We all liked it o.k. but none of us were emotionally invested enough in it to "borrow" it. LOL I didn't spend all that much time over at my grandma's house. She had so many grandchildren that she had trouble remembering who was who and besides that, she wasn't really the doting, huggy-lovey type so for the most part, I only saw her on holidays and then maybe one or two other randomly selected times in any given year. But I loved her because she was my grandma and because my dad loved her so very dearly. The few significant memories I do have of knowing her always come back to me whenever I see a tupperware bowl of ice cream or one of these puzzle maps.
