I unlocked a core memory this morning. On Sundays after church, I would make lunch with my Grandma.
Before I begin, my Grandma was ‘Mimi’ to me. I gave her that name as a child because ‘Memaw’ sounded dreadfully old. As a little girl observing my Grandma’s personality, I decided she was far too spirited to be associated with such an old person’s name. She needed a name that was in between being both a grandmother and herself, Louise.
Most of the time, we fixed chicken with mashed potatoes, broccoli, and dinner rolls. At times the chicken was with other vegetables and starches. Sometimes we ate lasagna, other times it was chicken fried rice. The meals were not extravagant, but they were comforting. Eating Sunday lunch was a moment of peace amidst other life circumstances.
We always prolonged this peace by enjoying more food and drink after lunch. I do not think Mimi knew of it as a time of peace. It was for me though. Looking back, I love how quiet my Sundays were back then. After lunch, we would make vanilla lattes or go big and bake brownies and top them with hot fudge sauce and vanilla bean ice cream.
Occasionally, we would take a drive around town and stop for custard or ice cream or coffee. Usually, we would stay in and watch movies while we had our dessert. Mimi sometimes took naps after lunch. She would fold her arms and lay her head down on the kitchen table after the dishes had been cleaned up. Eventually, I started enjoying Sunday naps too. I always felt so rested when I would wake up.
If we had more energy, we would take my jar of change, dump it out on newspaper sheets we had spread across the kitchen table, group them, count them, and roll them up to take to the bank. If we were not counting change, we were cutting coupons out of the Sunday paper.
It was a time of ‘in-between.’ It was a time when she was getting older and had started moving slower and I was getting older and becoming a young adult. Yet, it was before she got sick, it was before life became harder, and before some of the darkest times of my life.
That time of ‘in-between’ is long gone now. Remembering is bittersweet. I wish I could go back in time to have one more Sunday lunch. I wish I could go back and only know life up to that point. I wish I still believed life had already been the hardest it would get to be for a long while. However, I am so thankful I have memories like this in the first place that I will cherish for the rest of my life.
❤