grandma

I don't have many memories from when I was little, especially having to do with my family (and as you all know I am not particularly close with my mother, I have many problems with her). But: I do have these brief snippets of memories of when my little brother and I used to visit my late, maternal grandmother when we were very little.

My mom grew up on a very rural farm in IN, a life so foreign to me. She grew up chopping the heads off chickens while wearing her church dress. They used metal rods heated over the fire to curl their hair.

My mother still uses aprons my grandmother made for herself; my mom once pointed to patches on them, "see, that's where she patched it..." my mother would say, I could tell it meant a lot to her to touch them...

I hardly ever think of my mom that way.

My grandma used to make us things like molasses cookies and milk pies. She had a garden, and a cold little shed outside she stored her own canned food in.

They had a well outside, where they got their drinking water. She used to fill up old milk bottles with it and store them in the fridge. I remember sneaking down in the middle of the night barefoot, in the dark, and drink from them, it was the most delicious water... There was usually a frog in the well whenever I had to fill them up for her.

In her yard was a mulberry tree -- who ever heard of a 'mulberry'! -- and sometimes now I'll be walking the city streets, in my high-heels, into office buildings 42 stories high with concierges and security, and I'll remember that I once climbed that mulberry tree and picked the berries, freezing them and eating them like candy.