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acceptance, divine this, family, fearless, grace, gravel roads, home, inheritance, knowing, love, postmark, rural traces, sacred intimacy, sometimes, story, time, truth, value
Over the weekend, I had a moment – an epiphany of sorts. Perhaps it was just a fleeting view through an almost empty glass, but it was good.
I was standing in the market browsing maple syrup options. I love maple syrup, and am somewhat of a snob when it comes to pancakes, waffles, butter, and syrup.
Anyway, back to the telling. There between the maple leaf shaped bottles and the plastic options for fat free, sugar free, and tasteless, was a bottle of Karo syrup.
My fingers lingered over the label, while my heart was racing backwards to a clapboard kitchen where my granny sat in a straight back chair not far from the woodstove. With the practiced hands of a chemist, she poured Karo syrup in a bowl and then a stab of butter.
With her tiny hands, she gripped the bowl and beat the concoction until it was the color of summer wheat. Then she would dip one piece of bread at a time (referred to as light bread by we southerners) into the sweet batter.
And one piece at a time, we would wait patiently for a piece to be passed to us. Our little bit of heaven – our divine sacrament for living a life swelled up with blessing.
But the ‘aha’ moment was in realizing that I hadn’t told that story, and it’s also quite possible that the memory is folded just as sweetly away by my sisters and brother – in a place where treasure needs not space or name. And the thought that I hadn’t shared made me a bit sad, for surely it is a felony against creation to hoard away the best parts of us, the stories of our becoming.
Bet you know what I had for dinner Sunday evening……..
Let us speak kindly of our beginnings, memorizing anew the parts where love made us at home.
. . .
I’m sure that we all have such “granny ” memories filed in the libraries of our minds, Bobbie. Nice to find them now and then, take them out, dust them off, and relive those warm moments, isn’t it? …..xo
me
It is like coming home over and over again. xo
For my turn, I recall my granny making scones for tea. We had them with homemade jam (conserve?) and cream she skimmed from the top of boiled milk. I tried the trick with the cream myself recently, but the milk is no longer rich enough for it to work – sad!
O, Frederick, you’ve made me think of molasses and warm biscuits. Yummmmmm! Thank you…….. And you’re so right. Things are rarely as divine when we try to recreate them. Perhaps that has more to do with time than ingredients. 🙂
Heart stories enfolded in time…having read yours, I remembered standing by my Great Granny making butterscotch…the scents and feeling came flooding back…I love you Bobbie, always Xx ❤
O, Jane, that sounds divine! I can smell it now………. Always, when you are home, you hold a part of me………. I love you. ❤
You are part of my home Bobbie, always ❤
We are all full of such moments. Usually buried in our brains’ (or souls’) deep recesses. On my blog, i think it’s the december magazine, I recalled an early poem: fat and skinny had a race etc – which is bound to my grandmother and a whole flood of sensations from early childhood that I also recall as a whole, all inseparable from my grandmother’s love.