There's sugar in the bone...

My great-grandmother was a somewhat eccentric lady that I was lucky enough to get to know for the first few years of my life. She had four children, twelve grandchildren, and more great-grandchildren than I can name without help.

Every summer, the entire family would gather at Mamaw Freeman's house. She lived in an old country farmhouse with a big wrap-around porch and a large front room where she would sit and receive her visitors. I always had to wait in line to get to her chair. The line would wrap through the house as children and adults alike waited to share hugs and kisses with her.

Her hands were strong, even in her old age, and callused and knotted from years of picking cotton, canning vegetables and mending boo-boos. She would put those slender hands on each side of my face, lean down from her chair, and kiss my forehead with a hundred little pecks. Each time, she would smile and say, "There's sugar in the bone."

Mamaw was a great story teller. She would entertain us for hours by telling us what things were like when she grew up, painting pictures of a world that seemed so far away from our lives in the 90s. She assured us that she never got in trouble as a child, and we should try to be just a good as she was. She only got one whipping in her entire life, and it wasn't even her fault. Mamaw Freeman had sugar in the bone.

She taught us to be sweet from the inside out: to love God, to help others, to pray about everything, to laugh and to enjoy life. I didn't live up to my Mamaw's perfect behavior record. Few people could have. But down deep, there's sugar in my bones.