Grandma, Food, and Memories
I used to eat 8-10 homemade biscuits in one sitting. Foolishly but happily. The biscuits were warm and fluffy on my plate that was properly garnished with Alaga Syrup and a good portion of butter. I was recklessly filled with joy and my 6-year-old bulging tummy was beyond satisfied as I sopped my way to heaven. I mostly did all of this for grandma. I never quite got enough delight from watching her watch me savor a thing her hands had prepared. My delight delighted her. Grandma was bubbly, with that laughter that came easily and often, and she never took her eyes off me. She watched me tear into one biscuit filled with lovely intention after the other. "Skeet, you really like those biscuits, huh?" She would tease and I would go in for more.
That was almost thirty-seven years ago and while my memory can't navigate all the specific details of those moments, I remember exactly how I felt: loved. I often credit my grandma as one of my first recognitions of love — which is something because my grandmother was not necessarily a soft or vulnerable or tender woman. Life stripped this way of being and becoming away from her. She was born in Mississippi to the fate of Black folks in the 1930s, migrated to the north and regularly experienced the mess of something as simple as existing in her own black skin and the dangers of living inside a female body. She was not the doting grandmother I had watched in movies. She was sharp and bossy and witty and busy and a disciplinarian. She believed in hard work and children were no exception to this.
I washed windows, wiped baseboards, and pushed around a Hoover vacuum cleaner that was certainly heavier and definitely taller than I. I planted flowers, mowed lawns, and plucked weeds from the cracks in her driveway. I raked a hoe over dark soil in her garden before I had permission to attend to the business of kids. I have never washed more greens, picked more beans or shucked more ears of corn.
But exhaustion was not the only thing she offered me. She had a way of loving, slow and methodically that was easy to miss if you weren't paying attention. And this love was more often than not experienced at her kitchen table. All through her food, in her company, the sparkle in her eyes and the overwhelming gift of her complete attention.
2020. We'll all remember this number. This year. And I will always and especially remember, during one of the most difficult seasons I have experienced in my adult life, my late grandmother filled my spirit with the essence of her. Momma found grandma’s recipe book that I had been asking about for years. Who knew touching that book and savoring her handwriting would take me to a place I needed while everything else in the world seemed misaligned. I nestled myself in memories of her which reminded me of the thoroughness of love. The goodness of it. The purity of it. How many forms it can take. The depth of it. Grandma reminded me that love is. It always is and that you can still locate it even in places we may deem hard.
Before the little yellow bus pulled up in front of her house, whisking me off to school, I'd sleepily allow the smell of bacon frying and coffee coming to life inside a tin percolator to lead me to the kitchen. Grandma was seated at her table with hands wrapped around a mug of Joe, as she called it. She was still, easeful, and in a reflective state. I often wondered what sort of thoughts were swimming through her mind and why this was her practice. Maybe it was something about taking the morning in. Maybe she was offering herself a small window of peace before her day started. Regardless of the reasoning, her morning routine provided me with a warmth that seemed to effortlessly abide in her space.
"Morning, Skeet," she would say as I pulled out my chair and took a seat across from her. She’d get up, go to the stove, place my breakfast on a plate and bring it to me. After she sat back down, she would just stare at me. Slowly taking me in. Making room for me. Seeing me. Holding me with her gaze. Loving me with a quiet and gentle intensity I could not have understood how much I needed and would need. I just know how she made me feel mattered. I know it filled me up just as thoroughly as those home-cooked meals did.
As I pull out my chair in my 40s and sit down at my own table before the sun rises, I am reminded of her, that chuckle, that smile and the strength of her heart. No matter her encounters with love - she allowed me the privilege of finding a safe place in hers. She taught, by doing, how to take in stillness and how to take in the people around you. Grandma, her food and these memories. Who knew how thoroughly they could sustain. Even now.