Gram

By Caitlin

I am four years old and we're down the Cape at a rented beach house. It's the off season and the mornings are chilly. My brother and I eat tiny boxes of the special, sugary cereal we're allowed this once a year as we wait for my grandmother to get up. She's always the first, always indulges us to go right down to the beach first thing in the morning, straight away. It can't be much past 7am. The tide is low, exposing ribs of rippled sand for what seems like miles. We dig and dig and build and build in the stinky, purple sand. It smells like heaven. 

I am five years old and we're down the Cape at a rented beach house. It's the off season and the mornings are chilly. We're celebrating my early July birthday while the family is all together. I've just had my ears pierced and I'm thrilled and light and happy in the way only a five year old with newly pierced ears can be. I'm in my grandmother's room and I see a wrapped birthday present sitting on the shelf in her closet. "What is it?" I ask. She teases me. We bicker, giggling. It's a bicycle, we decide. 

I am five years old or two or seven, it doesn't matter. We're down the Cape at a rented beach house and it wouldn't be our family week at the Cape without those tall, opaque-white tupperware containers of Gram's spaghetti and meatballs. There's always a little bit of burntness to the meatballs that make them just right.

I am 9, or 10, and Gramma has come down to visit us in Rhode Island. She always comes for my birthday. It's a gorgeous, early July morning when I go downstairs to find that everyone is already awake, sitting outside on the front porch. She smiles a big, genuine smile at me and wishes me Happy Birthday. Mom or Dad or both bring me orange juice, scrambled eggs and sausages. I am almost 31 years old and I still remember how good that orange juice and sausage tasted as I sat on my parents concrete front steps on my 9th or 10th or 11th birthday, sun shining on my face, feeling so loved. Sometimes I think about that morning on other birthday mornings.

   

I am 10 years old and we're at the beach in Rhode Island. Gramma reminds us everything she long ago taught us about how to body surf. I try and try and time and again watch her fly past me effortlessly, a floating flash of leopard print bathing suit.

   

I am 8 years old in my parents kitchen. Gramma shows me how to make the pie crust, divide and roll it into balls, wrap and freeze the several you don't need. We spread the crust out, careful not to tear it. We pour sugar and spices, slice apples, dot butter, seal edges, vent the tops. We put butter and sugar on the trimmings and bake them into treats. She teaches me her patented secret for mile-high crust and the results are so good that when I later make a pie on my own very few people believe an 8 year old made it. This simultaneously annoys me and makes me immensely proud.

   

I am 26 years old and my new boyfriend, whom I'll someday marry, tells me, as we're making Thanksgiving pies, that Gramma's recipe is more suited to 2 crusts, not 4 or 5. No wonder we had to be so careful not to tear the pie crust. Her Depression Era roots, at it again.

I am 25 or so, and she tells me that after my brother and I would visit or stay overnight, she'd climb to the second floor of her little yellow house and sweep mounds of candy wrappers from under the twin beds in the guest room. She'd lift the couch cushions, looking for hidden wrappers from the Nibs we snuck non-stop from her candy dishes. She never let on that she knew we were pilfering handfuls when her back was turned, never tried to stop us. I now wonder if she filled the bowls extra high before we came over.

Not to worry though. She was sure to yell at us when we brought juice into the living room and spilled it all over the carpet on Thanksgiving. And there was always that Mexican casserole she made that I hated. But if I were ever confused about my options at her house, I needed only to look to the sign on her fridge: "Tonight's menu, two choices: Take it, or Leave it."

I am every age, walking into Gramma's little yellow house, smelling the rich, meaty smell of Sunday dinner cooking. Sometimes when my husband cooks dinner, it smells exactly like my Grandmother's house and I can hardly bear it.

I am every age, and when I eat a warm or particularly fragrant raspberry it immediately takes me back to the bush in her backyard, where my brother and I would pick and eat, pick and eat for hours. Sun-warmed raspberries fresh off the bush: There's nothing like them.

  

I am 27 years old and just bought my first house. My parents come to visit and bring me a clipping from Gramma's rhubarb, which grows in their garden. First Gramma had to move to a place where she didn't have her own garden, so she used some of my parents' space to tend her plants. Then it got too hard for her to do, so she left it to them. That damn rhubarb has tormented me for the 3-going-on-4 summers it's been in my garden. It's never flourished. It keeps giving the impression it's done, and then coming back. It's survived drought and being moved and suffocating heat and humidity and other unnamed hardships. But it won't give up. It keeps trying. It's smaller and shrunken, no longer big and robust, but it knows there's life out there for it, even if it's not what it once was. 

Gramma is 95 now, and I am almost 31.

  

All photos are mine.

Comments

[Aferg22]

It is really not fair that I am crying at a Food Lush post (no offense to Food Lush). Thsi was just beautiful. I want to give your Gram a big hug and eat some pie. :-)

[stephanie]

Damn it! I should know better than to read your posts while I'm at work, Caitlin! I'm all choked up over here.

I hope you print this out and send it to your Gramma. (Or send her the link, if she's tech-savvy!)

[Tessie]

Just lovely, my dear. The pictures are PERFECT.

[Julie]

I'm taking my nana (87) to see her sister (91) at the south shore this weekend (WOO IRISH RIVIERA!). We will drink, eat meatballs and sauce, and listen to the windchimes harmonize with the waves. Its our happy place.

[TUWABVB]

Love that I clicked through to say I was crying at work, and I know now I'm not the only one. Beautiful post - love the idea of passing plants down - my MIL brought some hydrangeas to our new home from my husband's grandparents' farmhouse and it meant the world to us.

[Kelly]

Ohhhh... this is beautiful. I miss my gram and my mom xo

[Rebecca (Bearca)]

As always, I love your posts about your family. xoxo

[Joan]

This was beautiful. Thank you.

[-Jen]

I did not expect to cry at a Food Lush post. So many of your memories brought back so many of mine. Thank you for sharing.

[Jen]

This is the sweetest post. Brought tears to my eyes. I loved it.

[your sobbing little cousin angela]

i'm sure you can imagine how insanely fast my bottom mccaffrey booga lip is quivering right now..... and i also may or may not be crying in a starbucks

[Maggie]

This is a beautiful tribute to your grandmother & carefree days gone by...takes me back to my own summer & sand & family memories in MA & ME... :)