By The Side of the Road Part 2

The one memory that I have as an adult that really changed my perception of my grandmother is related to her ladies' Bible study group. I would chauffer her to the hostess' house each week that summer. I was the youngest by a good half century. Anyway, each of the ladies would host the group. The other ladies would dress up to go. We would do the lesson for the week and then we ate homemade cookies, cakes, and tea sandwhiches. It was a big deal.


Up to this point, I knew my grandmother as a country woman with mad farmer's wife skills. She could can or pickle anything. She pasteurized her own milk and churned her own butter. She was thrifty. Nothing was too old to be used until it disentegrated. A simple plastic, disposible cup could be used for years.


So when it was my grandmother's turn to host, I saw something else entirely. For a week, I helped my grandmother clean. I moved furniture, stalked and destroyed dust bunnies - all two of them, washed windows, scrubbed floors and washed the good china, silver and crystal. Then there was the careful menu planning and trip to the grocery.


I didn't remember anyone but family coming to the house my entire life. I hadn't thought, until that point, of my grandmother as a house proud woman. I ironed and she started the napkins. She set the table just so after looking it up in the World Book to make sure she had it right. I served as maid and commie chef that day. I watched my grandmother and her quiet dignity that day. I understood her better after that, I think.

Later, when my grandmother couldn't cook holiday dinners any more because the arthritis in her knees and hips had gotten so bad. Of all the things she had difficulty remembering, my grandmother still remembered how to cook all the holiday favorites. I thought about how hard it must have been to be usurped in her own kitchen.

I saw her sitting at the kitchen table talking to us as we cooked and I thought again about that day she hosted her friends. I gave her a knife, the onions and the celery to chop for the dressing. I asked her to give me precise instructions so it would be the same. I served as her commie chef that day because something in me wanted to preserve the dignity of the woman from that day from just a few years before. With everything else that time and circumstance had taken from her, I needed her to keep her ability to participate in the holiday cooking intact.