Memories of Irene
Michael takes a break from environmentalism this week and shares with you an overlooked post from July 7.
Image from Cookthinker, via Flickr.
Summertime means a lot of things to a lot of people. For me, summer means that the local growing season is in full swing, and that I have a box of produce waiting for me every Saturday for pick-up at the Adams Morgan Farmers Market two blocks away from my house. This past Saturday’s box was particularly exciting. It contained the first real fruts of the season (peaches and apricots), string beans, radishes, spring onions, green garlic, broccoli, cauliflower, basil and arugula. What a bounty! The box also contained something else this week, something that stirs ancient memories: a giant zucchini.
Upon laying eyes on this 18-inch-long vegetable, I was immediately transported back to my childhood. I’d often spend a summer month at my grandmother’s house, where one of my duties in her house was helping tend the garden. One of the annual surprises was finding enormous zucchinis lying about the plot like slumbering sea lions: torpid, dark and shining in the summer sunshine. I was always amazed at the sheer size of these enormous vegetables, and even more-so when my grandmother would recommend that I leave them in the summer sun for a few more days, to get even bigger.
My grandmother, Irene, was a very wise and caring woman. She loved her grandchildren endlessly. No matter how infirm or old she was, she would always greet me with a hug so huge it felt like the world was embracing me. She had a sign hanging in her kitchen that read, “If Mom Says No, Ask Grandma.” And often, when I wanted a cookie or a lollipop or an extra scoop of ice cream, that’s just what I did. Usually to enormous success. I can recall spending countless afternoons with her playing Scrabble or Gin or Water Works or another card game she’d dig up from her childhood memory of playing cards with her grandmother.
Irene wasn’t always smiles and hugs. Once I lost my temper while playing Scrabble with my antagonistic brother in her living room, and I tossed the board and scattered the tiles across the carpet: this small show of power was met with a much larger one from Irene, who scolded me and insisted I find every last tile. I recall once, when I was older, swearing to her that I would never eat meat again. This vow was met with a similar reaction. Raised on a farm and firmly believing that meat and eggs were huge components of healthy diets, she couldn’t let me make predictions for the rest of my life without warning me, verbally and loudly, how long that life could be, God willing.
One of the strongest memories I have of Irene is another sign that hung in her kitchen. On it was pictured a series of poorly drawn faces: some square and some overly round; some orange and some purple; some human, some feline and some giraffe-like. And above this rag-tag collection of faces it read, “God made me, and God doesn’t make junk. “ It was hard for me to reach adulthood with an intact self-esteem while growing up in a household with an overbearing and antagonistic older brother who seemed to never let me live down the massive wrong I did him by replacing him as the baby of the family. The occasional glimpse of this sign there on the door to the cupboard that contained the savory snacks, such as pretzels and Bugles and cheddar Goldfish, helped to solidify at least a few nuggets of that underdeveloped ego.
I never came out to Irene before she died. Seeing as she was a devout Catholic (though she showed it in actions and rarely in words) and knowing as I did how she reacted when her core values were tested (see the vegetarian part above), I’m not certain how she would have reacted. Perhaps she would have show me anger and rejection, but I’d prefer to think she would have circled her arms around me and embraced me with the gentle force of the whole world.
For dinner tonight, I pulled out that giant zucchini. I chopped it up into half-inch cubes and sauteed it with chopped green garlic, olive oil, salt, pepper, and a whole bunch of chopped, fresh dill. The earthy smell of the zucchini mixing with the tanginess of the dill reminded me of the smell of Irene’s kitchen in summertime. As my boyfriend and I sat down to dinner, I looked at him, then thought of Irene, and remembered, “God doesn’t make junk.”
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