GRANDMA'S PROMISE ...

Here is my 4 yr. old son Matt and my mother. They were great friends and loved to spend time together “fixing the problems of the world”.

When Matt was 7 Mother came to stay for a few weeks and she and Maffy (as we affectionately called him then) set up a daily routine. They would head off to the small stream near our property to go fishing. They would often take a lunch with them as well as their fishing rods and his little creel box complete with hooks and worms and a special place for Grandma’s cigarettes. My husband and I were not smokers and she knew we'd prefer that she smoke away from the house. 

I would love to have been privy to their talks. I’m sure they solved many of the problems of his little world, but I had no idea that they were discussing mother’s world, too. One morning I glanced in to Matt’s creel box just before they headed to the stream and I realized that mother’s cigarettes were missing. When I asked about it Matt just smiled and said “Oh, didn’t we tell you? Grandma doesn’t smoke any more” and then Mother went on to explain that Maffy had tactfully and persistently kept after her until she had no excuses left !

I have to admit that I wondered if it would last since we had tried tactfully over the years to rid her of the habit, but it did !  She was to live for 31 more years and near the end of her life I asked her if she’d ever smoked again. She seemed really taken aback by my question. “Of course not”, she said, “I made a promise to Maffy, didn’t I ?”