Captain Me Planet

I just discovered my grandmother’s recipe box. My grandmother, who has spent a lifetime serving everyone around her, and cooking the very best food you’ll ever put in your mouth, and is now being lost to dementia. Alzheimers? Maybe. No one really knows. All we really know is that she is largely lost to her family, and it is very, very sad.

For my mother, particularly, as she is the one who is largely charged with helping my grandmother (Mama Kat) dismantle the life she once had, and try to cope with what is now. In the wake of the dementia, that due to dementia, Mama Kat can. not. understand. Also in the aftermath of losing my grandfather nearly 2 years ago. The man she’s lived with since she was 19 or 20. Don’t think this was a picture perfect marriage. They duked. it. out. There was a lot of pain. But it was the only thing they knew, and they counted on that. To be left without the only thing you can recall, as your brain is deteriorating, must be more frightening than I can ever imagine. And pray I never know.

We’re southern. Born here, mostly. Raised here, primarily. Lived here, largely. Heck, around where I live now, there is a street named after my grandfather’s side of the family. We know cornbread. Buttermilk. The best biscuits you could ever put in your mouth. Iced tea, sweet. Fried okra. Pinto beans. Butter beans. Cheese grits and full fat bacon. Mashed potatoes to die for. Really. die. for. Covered dishes are a way to say hello. Welcome. I’m sorry. We care. Congratulations. Call if you need us. We love you. You are cared for. If you care, cook.

When I was a little girl, Mama Kat and Shealy (my grand dad) used to take me out for drives in the country. The country. We’d pass the cemetery where half my relatives were buried, and stop at a small country store for a strawberry Ne-hi. I said staawbebby. A word Shealy used with me til the day he left this earth, and that when my own toddler said, I called Shealy to listen to it. You hear that, Shealy? He said staawbebby. We need to find him a Ne-hi! For them, I’d never grow up. And somehow, there’s a comfort in that. That someone in your life will always see you as sweet, innocent and as blameless as a small child. This is a gift. No matter what I did, I could do no wrong. This testimony I gave at his funeral. I was always perfect, to him.

There’d be Sunday Dinners whenever some family could gather. In our part of the country, dinner is at noon, and supper in the evening. All my adult life, whenever my exposure to other cultures would have me saying I’m going out for dinner, my Shealy would say, don’t forget who you are, you’re going out for supper. And at these Sunday Dinners, were the finest delicacies ever to touch the human tongue. Now we southerners do often get a bad rap for what we eat. Fried road kill and the like. But these critics never sat down to dinner with my Mama Kat. Once, in college, I drove over from Athens to Spartanburg, just to visit and spend the night. Mama Kat said what do you want for your homecooked meal? And I replied, oh maybe some fried chicken, or butter beans and cornbread, or pintos and fried okra. When I arrived? All of it, and more. A southern woman never lets a guest go hungry. Our mantra? Too much is not enough. Have enough to feed any number of unexpected guests, and then some leftover for breakfast.

So. I have an inside view of her recipe box, now. And what surprises me at first, is that all my favorite foods are not listed. Not recorded at all. And then I realize, she doesn’t need a recipe for those things. Those are things she’s known how to cook since she was about 10, and her mama wrang (correct past tense?) the neck of a chicken to fry up for supper. Or dinner.

What’s in the box, primarily, is my mama’s recipes. For things like lasagne. Poppyseed Chicken. Cheese Krispies. My other grandmother’s BBQ sauce. Wedding Punch. And often in her very distinct handwriting, but sometimes in my mama’s. And one that I think is my great-aunt Lib’s. Shealy’s sister that left us when I was a little girl. And that loved my mama like her own. And was one of many brothers, the lone girl. Some other scripts are in there that I may never know the author of.

The recipe box is a window to a past. My past. My children’s past, and theirs’.