Martha

Whenever I catch the scent of freshly cut peppermint leaves and kibba spices or feel the inside of a malted milk ball sizzle and melt on my tongue or pass grape leaves on the side of the road that wouldn’t be missed by anyone if I picked a few for dinner, I return to Grandma’s house.

My grandmother preferred not to be called Sitto, as it had an old lady connotation in the Old Country. She would sit in the same kitchen chair every morning watching daily Mass on the television and count how many people actually stopped to make the sign of the cross after communion. When I was a kid, I would run to her from the front door, pitter pattering clumsily over the burnt orange and mustard floor tiles.

After snatching a hug and some gum drop candies from the snowman cookie jar, my next stop was the velvet couch, blue as berries. I would lie there for hours trying to use my mind powers to untangle patterns of raised wallpaper while dad and grandma talked about boring, serious grown up things. Or, maybe it was just in ten minute intervals. I was never good at the concept of time as a child.

As years passed and the energy required for leaving the house became too draining for grandma, dad and I would do her weekly grocery shopping. Every list requested green bananas and Hot Pockets—ham and cheese.

This was around the same time that short-term memories started taking to her mind like Teflon, sliding away before she realized they had cooked.

        “Here you go, Grandma,” I would say, setting a plate in front of her.

        “Aren’t you gonna eat? Here, have some of mine,” she would reply as she began cutting all her portions in half.   

        “No, Grandma, I already ate.”

        “Oh, ok.”

Two bites later.

        “Aren’t you gonna eat? You gotta eat something.”

        “I already ate. Thanks, though.”

        Two more bites.

        “Where’s your food? You need to eat.”

        “Mom, she already ate!” Dad would pitch in with an occasional, “And, where are your teeth, Ma?”

        Grandma had a habit of leaving her dentures in her pants pockets. Most often, her teeth were in the dryer.

Her Christmas gift to grandkids was the same every year— a bag filled with apples, oranges, nuts, and a dollar bill.  We would gather within the wood panel walls of her living room, cross-legged on the shag carpet, watching each other’s skits and songs. Tradition held that the youngest— me— had to don a Christmas tree costume and be wound up in lights. One year, my cousin Meaghan taped an additional red flashing bulb to my nose, two carols for the price of one.

Grandma taught me to sew. She sat with me on the edge of her bed when I was six years old and guided the needle in my hand through an embroidery pattern. She was not alive to attend my wedding seventeen years later, but I used her machine to sew my dress.