It’s fun reading your Wise Granny stories.
I hope you will write more! If you missed them, read the comments section starting with those two posts back and continuing under the previous post. The previous post’s comments also include conversations about trains and gardens and lots of other good stuff.
The view of our home, taken upon returning to camp late in the day, Benson, Arizona
A few comments made me realize that I didn’t convey clearly the sources and breadth of Granny’s wisdom.
I want to correct that.
Granny made decisions based upon more than weather conditions. During her eighty-plus years of living simply, regular church-going, prayer, and Bible study, cooking, cleaning, raising children, planting, growing, harvesting at her truck farm and operating a roadside vegetable stand, and helping others in the surrounding Georgia countryside, Granny became wise.
Wisdom doesn’t come easy.
Granny suffered. Many years earlier, Granny (then known as Lois) suffered a great loss. As was her habit, Lois stopped by her daughter’s house on the way to Sunday evening church service. Mother and daughter always rode together, as the son-in-law didn’t attend church.
This one evening, the daughter, several months pregnant, said she didn’t feel up to it, understandable considering her condition.
The next day Lois (Granny) was told that her daughter passed away in the night. The cause was discovered to be sepsis, secondary to a kidney infection.
All the years that followed, Granny kept her daughter’s photo at her bedside.
That black-and-white photograph gave evidence of the intervening passage of time. The frame held the face of a smiling, young woman, her hair waved forties-style and held back from her forehead with a clip. As was the custom in those days before color photography, her eyes were lightly painted blue, her hair tinged with a warm brown, and her cheeks and lips brushed with a hint of pink.
No, wisdom doesn’t come easy.
Whether it was when to travel or when to stay home, when to broach a sensitive subject with a friend, which day to pick the figs or shake the pecans out of the trees, when to pursue, when to hold on tight, or when to let go, Granny knew.
For example . . .
People pride themselves in being able to “read” their bodies. Being alert to changes in one’s body, mental state, and energies is a valuable skill. Granny took that skill to a whole new level. She detected those changes in others before they did. Maybe she learned a hard lesson from the loss of her daughter and unborn grandchild.
One Saturday morning I stop by her house on my way to town. I tell her I can only stay a minute (how often we use that excuse when it’s really not true!), that I “have a lot to get done.”
Granny in her firm, yet loving, voice, says, “No. You’re staying for lunch.”
I protest.
Granny counters.
“If you go, you’ll get sick.”
I stay.
Granny sets to work.
A short while later, I sit at the table in her tiny and clean kitchen, Granny at the other end, her head bowed, saying grace, including a few words on my behalf.
This is what my friend put before me on that chilly, blustery, November day: one well-browned Jimmy Dean sausage patty, a thick slice of jellied cranberry sauce, a biscuit fresh out of the oven, and a bowl of warmed collard greens with a chunk of pork fat hiding in the pot likker somewhere.
(Read about the nutritional benefits of collards. If you don’t want to read it all, at least scroll down to the graph. What a powerfully healthful vegetable!)
Boy, everything tastes so good!
As I eat I feel myself being fortified. New strength flows through me. Being Saturday-busy the way working people often are, I hadn’t noticed how depleted I’d become.
And I feel calmer, too. I consider asking for another biscuit, this time with some of Granny’s homemade fig jam.
I don’t have to ask.
“There’s more if you want it.”
Thanks, Granny!
rvsue
NOTE: I apologize for the lack of photos to go with this post. More next time!
Thank you for your responses to the Rusty and Piper update. Interesting comments were coming in under the previous post shortly before this one being published. Enjoy! — Sue
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