The Secret Life of Meemaw

In the American South, everyone’s got either a ma or a meemaw. Some people are lucky enough to get both. Mas give you life and choose your school and draw you a future and brush your hair and teach you who to trust. Meemaws cook your food and iron your school clothes and show you how to grow a garden and drag you to church on Sundays; and when your ma gets too tired or angry or busy, meemaws take over all the things a ma should do but can’t. I was lucky enough to get a ma and a meemaw.

Before I could form entire sentences, I would spend days at a time with my meemaw – that’s my ma’s ma. We would go to farms to see cows and buy eggs, I would make a mess of cherrios and strawberries from her garden, and on the livelier days I would throw up all over her apron when she was cooking cake or preserving chowchow or pickling watermelon rinds.

I didn’t know the difference between a ma and meemaw back then, but when my aunt came to visit from some far-flung corner of the earth, “my mom” and “mi mamá” sounded awfully alike. After all, my meemaw was my ma when my ma wasn’t. And so, ‘meemaw’ became one word among many in my ever-growing list of vocabulary.

Meemaw was diabetic and devoutly religious. She sent me to Sunday school every week of summer. I hated it. Black Jesus was alright, but her God was mean and jealous and struck down people for minor offences. The God at my Lutheran school sent rainbows and saved children from harsh fates and loved everybody. So, I talked to my god on the weekdays and I nodded to hers on Sundays, just in case he was watchin’ me as closely as she was.

Meemaw paid for my music lessons when my ma told her I had a future with the flute. Her hand was firm, but her heart was inclined to let the ear take charge of my future. And when she heard me play at my first recital, she nodded and whispered to my ma, “Money well spent here.”

Meemaw didn’t dare share her recipes with anyone outside of the family; and ma didn’t cook; so, she taught me all her kitchen’s secrets. I watched and cut and mixed and whisked and went on errands to the store to buy vanilla all by myself.

She stuffed me into ruffles and she prayed for me when I asked for something, and even more when I didn’t. And when I needed money for this and that and nothing really, she dug up her savings from an old hat box of laced socks and my faded ribbons.

When I asked my ma to have a tea party, her disinterest overshadowed my excitement to indulge in napkins and finger sandwiches and formal language and teapots. So, my meemaw took me to the only teahouse left in town. We sipped tea and ate biscuits – which were really just cookies – and talked about whatever it is that meemaws and granddaughters talk about at tea.

When she and my grandaddy used up all their saving to go on a trip to the Holy Land, Meemaw brought me a gift from the River Jordan which she had soaked in, herself, and returned to America to bathe my brother and me in holy salt water and the word of God. It turned out that Israel’s God was a lot more akin to the one I talked to at school.

I liked her better after that. No one I knew had been that far across the Atlantic, and my meemaw made it seem so easy that I couldn’t help but want a life that big and that far away.

When I got old enough to go out into the world on my own, my meemaw finally told me tales about the kind of life that I thought no meemaw should have.

Long before she was a meemaw, people used to call her by her first name, Annalee. After finishing college, she lived in New York City for a year. - “I was the first person in my family to go to college,” she’d never be remiss to remind us.

She drank White Russians in fancy hotels and befriended jazz club singers and walked through Harlem and wore fur coats that men – who were not my grandaddy – bought her for trips to the opera and theatre. It turned out that her kitchen wasn’t the only one with secrets.

I went away from home and found myself in that same beautiful city, doing things she’d done and things she hadn’t, and came back after a spell to find that my days with her had turned to:

“Bring me my dentures, honey.”

“Mix that for me, will ya.”

“Now, come and stir.”

A trip to the doctor.

Another dose of insulin.

“I feel so weak.”

A sudden fall on the stairs.

Another shot of insulin.

The Bible held a little closer at night.

My meemaw was getting old.

She knew her time on earth was coming to a close. She’d raised the kids and the kids’ kids and was tired and calling home to her creator. She left, eased out of the world in a most commended fashion, leaving me her fur coat and her kitchen and all its wares and the secret life of a meemaw and a meemaw’s granddaughter.

She prayed that I would live a big ol’ life and share with no one the secrets of her kitchen, but maybe I could take ‘em with me and make ‘em up into something lovely and grand and share with the world of meemaws that their prayers are always answered and that efforts never go in vain.