Sunday, July 6, 2008

Reflections on Sunday

Grace woke up with her eye hurting pretty badly and looking like she has been in a fight. So we stayed home from church. Jana's daughters, Gillian and Darcey, have been here for the last week. Jana used to fix them a pound of bacon and a dozen eggs for breakfast. Probably not literally, but her girls loved breakfast.

This morning I was bound and intent on making a good breakfast. They have had good ones all week at Grandmother and Poppa's, but felt like I should offer more than yogurt and a juice box today!

I always worry when Gillian gets quiet. When I was standing at her mother's stove, scrambling eggs and cooking ham, it reminded me of a similar experience.

My Grandmother Locke was a person who loved everyone. She never had two dimes to rub together, but if we were coming would buy a can of mackerel, breakfast food, and plan to feed us all. (No one knew in those days that mackerel was good for you. It was cheap and could feed a family.) So my strongest memories of her are in the kitchen at her stove.

After she died my parents bought her house. The first time I went back to Paris to visit them in her house, there stood my mother at the same stove in the same house and I was met with a flood of memories.

When Gillian got so quiet at the table this morning, I wonder if she was remembering too.

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