Unexpected Lessons From Grandma's Kitchen

Sometimes the simplest of things can flood the mind with memories and painful, complicated emotions. It's usually tied to one of our senses, a song, the smell of a certain flower or the taste of a particular food. It's incredibly overwhelming when your emotions are already fragile, with those memories riding dangerously close to the surface, threatening to break you.

Unfortunately for her, it was her favorite food and her children loved it too. The stuff out of the grocery store simply couldn't compare to the flavor of the fruit plucked fresh and ripe, right from the tree, then lovingly canned in her own kitchen. The season was all too short, if she didn't act quickly they'd have to go the whole year without and she knew her kids would never let her live that down.

She stood hopelessly staring at the hundreds of pounds of pears ripening in her cold room. On the one hand, she was eager for the juicy sweetness to flood her tongue. This year she could do without all the memories... it redefined the word bittersweet.

Her heart was already aching just thinking about it. God, how she missed Uncle and Sis! They'd always been able to throw her a much needed lifeline, snapping her out of the depths of the depression that threatened to devour her whenever Mama went on one of her tirades. Sis would always remind her that she was a grown ass woman now and Mama had no right whatsoever telling her how to live, especially when she, quite obviously, had no clue. Sis had always had a special knack for expelling any guilt Mama attempted to infuse into her soul. Sadly, Sis had passed almost three years ago.

But it was always Uncle that had opened her eyes to a side of her Mama she would have never known otherwise. He was frank and honest and SO funny. This summer's drama would have put him through the roof, had he still been around to witness it. There was no effort to hide his frustration with his sister and her 'holier than thou' attitude. Had it not been for him, she never would have known the truth. Both Mama and Grandma had always blamed their broken relationship on the other's religious choices. It all seemed ridiculous to her. They both claimed to have the same God and religious canon, but each had chosen different paths to serve. It was Uncle that had told her that Mama's choice had nothing to do with Faith. The one and only reason she had joined that particular church was because she knew full well that it would piss off Grandma. He'd spent his last couple of decades absolutely livid that Mama used her religion to push her own children away, especially when, in her youth, she'd been 'nothing more than the town bicycle'. That phrase always brought a smile to her lips.

She hadn't had the opportunity to really get to know her Grandma until she left home, because Mama and Grandma had such a tense relationship. If Grandma's name came up in conversation, Mama would rant about how disrespectful, controlling and horrible she was. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree, but we didn't dare tell her that. She only remembered visiting Grandma's house twice. Both visits had ended in disaster.

The first visit had been in the Spring. Dad had wanted the kids to experience the beauty of the Okanogan with all the fruit trees in bloom. It had been around the time of the her birthday, in May. Grandma was over the moon excited to have them come, especially knowing the children had never celebrated a birthday. She'd invited the entire neighborhood to come and help her show her youngest granddaughter what birthdays were all about. Mama waited until the cake was brought out to lose her shit in front of everybody. She didn't remember exactly what had been said, she just remembered Mama having a huge fit and loading all of their stuff into the car. They headed home that afternoon and Mama berated Grandma for the entire seven hour drive.

A few years later Dad had said that the kids should get to experience picking fruit and so they returned. One hot afternoon Grandma had given her a basket and instructed to go through the fence, to the orchard next door and grab some pears off of the ground. They'd make crisp and butter. Mama asked if they'd had to permission from the property owner to pick his fruit.

'God helps those who help themselves.' was Grandma's quick response.

Again, Mama lost it. She screamed at Grandma about teaching her children to steal while proclaiming to be a good Christian. Apparently, it took more than just going to church on Sunday to curry God's favor. As she screamed, she packed up their stuff, and before she could even grasp what was happening, Mama was ushering all the kids into the car and they were going home.

Years later, when she left home, she'd called her grandmother. The first thing Grandma said when told that she'd left home and the church, was that she had to come for Christmas. The young woman was uncertain. She'd yet to decide if she was even going to celebrate holidays, as she never had before. She didn't really know her grandmother, just had those awful memories... however, she did want to connect with all the family she'd never gotten to know growing up and many of them would be there, aunts and uncles and cousins, some of whom she'd never met.

As they worked together in Grandma's kitchen preparing the fourteen course Christmas Dinner, they chatted openly. One would never guess that they didn't even really know each other. That evening she discovered that Grandma wasn't the evil witch that her Mama had painted her to be. Quite to the contrary, she was a sweet, caring lady that loved her family fiercely.

Late that night, as she was helping Grandma clean up the aftermath of the festivities, she worked up the nerve to ask, 'Grandma, what about the pear tree? Mama was right about us not stealing pears. Why would you fight with her about something like that?'

Grandma froze, with her hands in the sink full of steaming soapy water. Her eyes filled with tears. 'We have shares in that orchard,' she said, ever so softly, 'But if it hadn't been the pears, your Mama would've just found some other excuse to pack you kids up and take you away again.'

Over the years that followed she grew quite close to her grandmother. Grandma was able to teach about celebrating holidays and birthdays, gardening, cooking, canning and most importantly, about loving your family as God truly intended.