SallyGanoJones

    It was just a measuring cup full of sugar, that’s all. Somehow leveling the top portion of the cup to make my one cup of sugar level stirred up the memory of being in the kitchen with Grandma.  After all, she taught me how to use measuring cups. Now it might seem like such a small thing, but today, as I measured the sugar, the thought of being in the kitchen with my grandmother, brought back a sweet memory, stirring sweeter memories than the recipe I was stirring in the mixing bowl.

    I continued preparing the fig jam recipe, but now, thanks to the vivid memory of a loving grandmother, I felt a divine helper by my side. I tied my apron snug around my waist, just as she would have done. The next steps of the jam-making process were about to get messy. In my mind, Grandma approved.

    I wondered if she’d be proud of me now, watching me in my own kitchen, fifty years after her detailed coaching in the lessons of cooking in her kitchen. Of course, measuring sugar or milk or whatever the recipe called for, required precision. Did it really make that much difference? At age ten or eleven, I didn’t understand why, but I trusted her instruction.

She was the teacher, and I was the pupil, I remember thinking. I wondered if she’d like to know her pupil learned so much from her and wanted to be “just like grandma.”

    I stirred the sugar and crushed figs and thought of the many happy times I helped Grandma pick and prepare the fruit that she made into jam. I’m reminded that to my grandmother, a good day’s work meant getting up very early to be in the field at sunrise to pick strawberries or blueberries as the sun came up.

    I still marvel at the care and love that my grandmother packed into her fruit preserves. Nothing that came from Grandma’s kitchen was put together carelessly. When she passed her tiny fruit-filled jars of jam out to friends, family, and neighbors, she had packed them with tender loving care. She would add to her jam one of her delightful pound cake loaves as a gift. All around the town there was no bakery finer than the kitchen of Bernice Gano.

    On another August day forty-five years later, I stir the pot of chopped figs and sugar with as much love as I can. The mixture boils. I pour the syrupy concoction into tiny half-pint jars, just as Grandma and I did in the summers of long ago.

    I feel her smile as the little jars cool and the anticipated sound of the seal sings its “Ping” sound.  I’m not done though. I will bake her pound cake recipe tomorrow and then pass my homemade treats on to loved ones and neighbors.

    I thank my grandmother for teaching me those little steps in her kitchen of long ago for my kitchen of today. After all, a cup of sugar needs to be measured precisely for the recipes to taste their best! Grandmother was the teacher. I was her pupil. She gave away her fruit preserves and cakes with love, and she gave me a grandmother’s love that was sweeter than any cake or jam. I still feel her love so many years after. I pray to give my own grandchildren the same lessons of love.