Grandma

A Cheep and Invaluable Experience

“Well, it’s just not easy to have a relationship with a chicken”, my friend concluded as we sat around the table comparing chicken stories. (Yes, we really were.) “I guess I will have to disagree,” I said, images surfacing from my own childhood. “I had a wonderful relationship with a little red rooster. His name was Red, of course. I was about six years old….” I had almost forgotten. The mailman had delivered the cardboard box while I was staying the weekend with my grandparents. And what a box it was! The whole box was bursting with ear-shattering shrill “cheeps”, and it was full of small holes through which tiny beaks frantically poked. Grandma’s batch of spring chicks had arrived! She carefully set the noisy box in the middle of the living room floor where I eagerly helped her open it. “Handle them gently now,” Grandma cautioned me as I…

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Grandma’s Peanut Butter Divinity Pinwheels

Spinning hay into gold is an impressive feat, even in the realm of fairytales, but Grandma Smith could spin sugar syrup into fine silver threads, and that was only the beginning. Fluffy white rounds of divinity with a swirl of peanut butter in the center—now that was worth its weight in gold. Every Christmas, Grandma invited a few family members into her small kitchen to help prepare this divine treat. Sometimes this privilege included Aunt Thelma, my mother and me. Even now, as I put on my apron and begin to assemble the ingredients for Grandma’s recipe, it’s as though I have slipped back in time, into my Grandma’s kitchen—a little girl again. ——————— Standing next to Grandma, my head just above stovetop level, I am mesmerized as she lifts the wooden spoon from the clear boiling syrup. “Watch for the silver thread to spin, now,” she explains. “That tells…

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