Cooking Lessons From Mammy

Tomorrow is my Mammy's birthday.  I don't know why, but this year I feel especially connected to her.     I want her to know how special she is to me and to all of my cousins.  I always felt cherished by her even though she nothing different for me than she did for her other granddaughters.  Mammy had four of them and I am pretty sure we would all say the same things about her.

Mammy was retired by the time I could remember and remember her I can.  She always had time to teach me; she taught me to cook, sew, plant a garden.  I have longed to be able to crochet beautiful afghans like the ones she made for all her children and a few great-grandchildren.  Numerous times Mammy sat with me, a needle and a ball of yarn.  She made it look so easy and my clumsy fingers just couldn't do it.

I would spend summers at her house and every day I helped her make lunch.  My brothers, cousins and I would pull the wagon out to the garden and pick squash, zucchini, beans, cucumbers, peas, tomatoes, peppers, dig potatoes and at the end of summer we had watermelons and cantaloups.  In the afternoons we would play dress up in her old cloths, shell peas while watching tv, and climb her big tree.

When I think of home, I think of her home.  When I think of Thanksgiving and Christmas I think of helping her make the shopping list, baking pies, and making candy.  When I think of a happy place I think of her farm.  When I have a pickle, I think of the hot summer afternoons spent in the kitchen watching her over the pressure cooker.

A writing assignment I gave every year asked my students to explain their scariest moment.  I always shared about the time I was six and a thunderstorm knocked the power out in the late evening while Mammy was trying to get all six of her grandchildren bathed.  She had six grandchildren that summer and only the help of her husband.  We roamed through the house, hand in hand, gathering mattresses and slept on the floor in the play room.

The summer I graduated college and accepted my first teaching job, Mammy's mind deteriorated with Alzheimer's.  My schedule was flexible so I was fortunate enough to spend time with her.  She told me things I had never heard before.  She told be about being pregnant with my Aunt Janice.  She told me about having a baby while her husband took a nap in the car.  She told me how she had just moved and couldn't find her clothes.  She told me I was a great cook who could make something from nothing I told her I had a good teacher.

For a long time thereafter she would call me sister, daughter, niece, and friend until she no longer spoke.  I am not sure if she ever again knew exactly who I was, but I know she always knew I belonged to her and that was good enough for me.

The saddest day of my life was when I realized that she would never know my children.  I grieved that thought for years, but by the time she passed I had come to terms with it.  Oh me of little faith I was.  I have faith that she is heaven and that she and my children will meet there someday.

Happy Birthday Mammy, my hero.