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kyburgI'm 8 years old.
I'm 8 years old, sitting at a formica table in the middle of a farmhouse kitchen in La Salle, Colorado. My mother is sitting at my right elbow, and we're eating raw pack raspberries my grandmother put up last year. I'm watching my mother do something very strange, but I recognize it now with my adult eyes. She's being the Good, Obedient Daughter and having a little something to eat like her mother wants her to. It's not her mother, it's actually her mother-in-law, but still, she's doing it.
Because I got caught picking unripe berries from the backyard and told them I'd never had raspberries before. And I told grandma how much my Mom loved raspberries and I was curious.
And I got a dish of them, too. And was watched to see that I ate every bit of them.
That was the summer I discovered crab apple trees, and nightcrawlers. Ice-cold irrigation sluices and Continental Airlines. It was the one trip I took to see my father's sister and her family after he died. I haven't been back since.
I'm 41 years old and sitting at a formica table in the middle of elderly housing in Clinton, Tennessee. Eating chicken n' dumplings and being watched to see if I like them, and if I've eaten all of it.
But it's my husband's favorite dish and I'm being told how to make it. I'd best have a nimble mind - I won't get a second chance to learn this.
Did you know that you could make grape juice dumplings? Remember how I said how fond Jim was of Grape Pop-Tarts? The whole family has a taste for Grape anything, it seems. Heat grape juice, and make a soft batter out of self-rising flour, some whipping cream, but mostly grape juice. Drop in small bits into boiling juice. Serve as dessert.
The last night we were there, we left at dusk to go back to the house to fall down, repack our bags and sleep until morning. Jim spied something around the corner of the house and went to catch it in midair with gentle, cupped hands.
It could have been anything - I was expecting a small bird or a bat.
But when he opened his hands and said "look--"
A moth, I thought. He's caught me a pretty moth.
But it was a beetle with a long body and long brown, patterned wings. As it flew out of his hands, it lit up like a green light stick.
Lightning bugs. I'd never seen one before.
It's such a sweet sensation, tart with the knowledge it's going to be fleeting...but I'm someone's grandchild again. Cherished, beloved and valued - no matter how banal I am in truth.
I sense my place in time within my generation -- one of the last children to be born in my generation, Jim one of the first to be born in his. His grandmother is the younger than my mother by a few years and his mother is less than a decade older than my older brother. Jim has aunts and uncles that are younger than him, and I am older than the two most involved in grandma's care.
It's an incredible sensation.
I got a good look at a life lived simply, photographs in a family album and Scrabble games late into the evening.
And for the first time in a long time, I am no longer the Elder...the Grownup. It's okay to play with cheap balsa wood gliders and radio-controlled cars and spend quarters on gumball & goodie machines.
I guess Grandma sometimes does know best.
I'm 8 years old, sitting at a formica table in the middle of a farmhouse kitchen in La Salle, Colorado. My mother is sitting at my right elbow, and we're eating raw pack raspberries my grandmother put up last year. I'm watching my mother do something very strange, but I recognize it now with my adult eyes. She's being the Good, Obedient Daughter and having a little something to eat like her mother wants her to. It's not her mother, it's actually her mother-in-law, but still, she's doing it.
Because I got caught picking unripe berries from the backyard and told them I'd never had raspberries before. And I told grandma how much my Mom loved raspberries and I was curious.
And I got a dish of them, too. And was watched to see that I ate every bit of them.
That was the summer I discovered crab apple trees, and nightcrawlers. Ice-cold irrigation sluices and Continental Airlines. It was the one trip I took to see my father's sister and her family after he died. I haven't been back since.
I'm 41 years old and sitting at a formica table in the middle of elderly housing in Clinton, Tennessee. Eating chicken n' dumplings and being watched to see if I like them, and if I've eaten all of it.
But it's my husband's favorite dish and I'm being told how to make it. I'd best have a nimble mind - I won't get a second chance to learn this.
Did you know that you could make grape juice dumplings? Remember how I said how fond Jim was of Grape Pop-Tarts? The whole family has a taste for Grape anything, it seems. Heat grape juice, and make a soft batter out of self-rising flour, some whipping cream, but mostly grape juice. Drop in small bits into boiling juice. Serve as dessert.
The last night we were there, we left at dusk to go back to the house to fall down, repack our bags and sleep until morning. Jim spied something around the corner of the house and went to catch it in midair with gentle, cupped hands.
It could have been anything - I was expecting a small bird or a bat.
But when he opened his hands and said "look--"
A moth, I thought. He's caught me a pretty moth.
But it was a beetle with a long body and long brown, patterned wings. As it flew out of his hands, it lit up like a green light stick.
Lightning bugs. I'd never seen one before.
It's such a sweet sensation, tart with the knowledge it's going to be fleeting...but I'm someone's grandchild again. Cherished, beloved and valued - no matter how banal I am in truth.
I sense my place in time within my generation -- one of the last children to be born in my generation, Jim one of the first to be born in his. His grandmother is the younger than my mother by a few years and his mother is less than a decade older than my older brother. Jim has aunts and uncles that are younger than him, and I am older than the two most involved in grandma's care.
It's an incredible sensation.
I got a good look at a life lived simply, photographs in a family album and Scrabble games late into the evening.
And for the first time in a long time, I am no longer the Elder...the Grownup. It's okay to play with cheap balsa wood gliders and radio-controlled cars and spend quarters on gumball & goodie machines.
I guess Grandma sometimes does know best.
