It’s a smell that brings you back to your childhood and suddenly you’re playing with your mom's perfume. A bite out of something that reminds you of the ham and cheese sandwich your grandmother used to make. In my righteous opinion, this is when time traveling becomes real. With one breathe, one simple taste we are suddenly 9 years old again. I can feel the sand between my toes and I'm wearing my two tone bathing suit, my favorite suit. My grandmother is sitting on the blanket she laid out for us, watching me like a hawk and I'm counting down the seconds before she calls me in to eat. And just like that I open my eyes and I'm 32 sitting in my kitchen looking at the pathetic ham on my sandwich wondering what it was she did to it that made it taste so good. Every so often I'll take the deli ham out of the fridge and as I pull back the zip lock, the sweet scent of ham hits my nose and just like that I'm back on the beach with my grandmother. Just for a second and then it all goes away and I'm slapped with my adult hood, stumped about the secret ingredient that she used to put into my sandwiches.
I spent summers with my grandparents, sometimes they would pick me up in their RV in Massachusetts and we would drive across country back to Georgia. I would listen to them say their prayers at night on their porch. At the time I thought it was so boring but thinking back I remember the quiet calm that took over the house when they said their prayers, it was a nice ending to our day.
We would attend church (my memory tells me it was at least 10 times a day) and listen to my grandfather lead the mass, he was a Deacon. He was so well spoken it mesmerized me. He knew how to make me laugh, not the gut laugh but the laugh that comes from your toes. Every so often he’d let me choose between going to Dairy Queen for a soft serve vanilla cone with cherry hard sauce or getting up early to go to McDonald’s for an egg McMuffin. He carried dentyne gum with him everywhere and had little bowls around the house filled with dentyne pieces. I can still smell the mint. He loved to walk and I loved to walk with him, especially since we used walking sticks, it made me feel wise and important. He would always pretend like a snake was jumping out of the bushes, it kept me on my toes. We would walk down the winding road to the farm to see the horses, and one time the owner even let me ride a horse. Mind you, I probably told the man that I was a professional horse rider and it was something I did in my free time back in MA. And grandpa being the easy going guy that he was let me have at it. He knew I'd figure it out. And I did, I figured out that I had no idea what I was doing. It didn't help either that there was this pony, apparently the horse's child, running alongside us ramming its nose into my leg practically shouting "get off my mother!". That was the only time I rode a horse.
I used to play make pretend in my grandfather’s study, I would look through his plagues and medals and pretend like I was a war hero just like him. I always wanted to join the military. While applying lotion on my back (I was wearing my favorite two tone bathing suit of course) my grandfather found a bump. This would later be diagnosed as Scoliosis which would later disqualify me from joining the military. God had other plans for me. My daughter was born on my grandfather’s birthday, she has his eyes and I’m pretty sure his sense of humor. I miss him.
I would watch my grandmother work at the local thrift store. This is where I found my love for 50's, 60's and even 70's clothes. I would come home with plaid polyester pants and wear them with pride. My grandmother would let me play with some of her wedges; she had a pair of red leather ones that made angels sing. I found a hideous sundress with an awful green pattern on it, looked like curtains. I loved it. I loved sailor buttons, bell bottoms, tweed, you name it. I thought I looked smashing. I should note that it would take years of training and practice before I would find a common ground between styling myself outside of my decade and keeping up with my current decade. For example, plaid on plaid just doesn't look good and red wedges with a green dress wasn’t pretty in the 60's either. And in case my memory ever falters, I have my 5
th grade class picture that my mother often refers back to.
My summer’s were spent helping out at the church, picnicking on the mountain, sampling my grandmother’s famous deviled eggs, going grocery shopping at the Piggly Wiggly, playing with the stray cats that were drawn to my grandparents back porch and playing with the only other two kids in the obscenely small town. I’m pretty sure the population was under 50, my grandparents knew everyone or they knew my grandparents. Sometimes my cousins would join me but I always preferred to go alone, I wanted my grandparents all to myself.
I learned that if something needed to be said, my grandmother was usually the one to say it. We would sit down for dinner and if I didn’t want to try something she made she would say, “You haven’t tried my stuffing”. If I used the word “she” I would hear, “Who, the cat’s mother?” She often said I reminded her of Karen, my mother’s sister…the rebellious one apparently. I’m guessing this was a suggestion that I challenged her too much. I often remember the time we were going to this house (or maybe it was a church) to attend a mass and I asked her how long it was going to be. Sometimes I couldn’t stop the words before they came out of my mouth. A trait I may have inherited from my grandmother or maybe it was my aunt. In my childhood defense, I only asked because there was a dog that I wanted to play with. However, it was too late; my grandmother was already three sentences deep into why it was so rude of me to question the amount of time we would be spending with God. So naturally I compromised and snuck over to see the dog before service started. He was so sweet and yet he was stuck in a field surrounded by barbed wire fencing. So...I let the dog out of the barbed wire fencing and then the dog rewarded me by jumping on me and jumping on me and jumping on me…and I screamed. My grandmother was not happy with me that day.
Looking back she made a lot of sacrifices in order to meet me in the middle. She wasn’t the type of grandmother to let me eat whatever I wanted or stay up to all hours of the night; she had rules (a lot of rules). Insert “my mother lets me do that”, and my grandmother’s response “I’m not your mother”. 6 nephews and 1 niece later, I have a new appreciation for that response.
My grandmother made sure I ate well, I was well rested and I had plenty of activities to do. So while she didn’t do well in the heat, she knew how much I loved the water. I would swim and swim and play in the sand and swim some more and she would call me in to reapply the lotion on my freckly face. And then she’d call me back in to eat and I would devour that ham and cheese sandwich. She must have injected it with grandmother yumminess. That was the highlight of my beach day, that and the cherry coke I’d chug down.
Going back to MA was another highlight, I would run to find my mother and the first thing I would do was take in her scent. Coming home was always the perfect ending to my summer.
I should note that I do not like stuffing, any and every kind of stuffing. The first time I told my husband this, he said to me, “You haven’t tried my father’s”…and just like that I was 9 years old again.
Thank you Grandma for ALL of the wonderful memories.
