GOOD GRANDDADS AND GRANDMAS
I didn’t know my grandfathers, but I certainly knew my grandmothers.
I grew up being close to them, not always geographically but always emotionally and relationally.
Today, many decades after their deaths, I still remember them vividly, mostly because of their cooking.
When I was a university student, I used to eat lunch occasionally with my Grandmother Chumbley—“Grams,” as I called her.
I’d often go by her house between my classes. We’d sit in her tiny kitchen, eat ham sandwiches on Roman Meal Bread and sip sugary iced tea. I’d tell her about what I was learning. I’d listen to her stories of growing up on a farm in Tennessee. And at the end of the meal, I’d dig into her lemon meringue pie, my favorite dessert. It was a taste of heaven, as was her company. She’d let me eat as much of the pie as I wanted, even the whole thing.
I looked forward to lunches with Grams. She loved me, as did my Grandmother Bodner, who also made delicious food, including homemade cabbage biscuits and noodles. Her Germanic background was most visible, or edible, in the kitchen and at the dinner table. At supper, she often enjoyed a small glass of beer, a taste I never acquired. (There are limits to grandparental influence.) And she told stories of trudging through the Great Depression and the 1937 Flood, which devastated parts of my hometown of Louisville, Ky.
My grandmothers made a deep, enduring impression on me. I am who I am in part because of them.
And now I am a grandfather.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Keep a civil tongue.