Ham and Potato Salad

Dear Grandma,

Last night was our second dinner together. There was a Thursday inbetween when we did not meet; you had to travel with Grandpa to see a specialist and you thought it best if we didn't try to have dinner together. Yesterday, Mom let me know you were expecting me.

The first thing you said after we exchanged hellos was, "So, are you going to shoot pictures for the Times Herald?" I didn't know what you meant and thought someone had given you misinformation. I recently gave up being a college photographer for a living, and thought you had somehow heard that I'd be working for the local paper next. I tried to feel my way around this one. "Oh yeah? Working for them, huh?" You said something about them putting out a call for pictures, and I realized it was a photo contest. Well, a photo contest of sorts. You showed me the newspaper clipping from Wednesday's paper, which I have now with me. They are looking for local residents to contribute series of pictures for this "A Day In the Life" feature they will be printing. You thought I should do it. "Wouldn't that be nice." If I did do it, I would take pictures of you and me having our dinner together.

Dinner was delicious again. I helped you carry down pretty blue plates of ham and potato salad; there were fresh salads for each of us, mixed vegetables, black tea to drink. You even made two apple dumplings for dessert, from your own recipe, left over from the years when you made what you could by using what you had. It was the best apple dumpling I've ever tasted.

The television was on last night. I thought you would shut it off like last time, but it blared evening news stories and used car commercials not three feet away from us during the whole of our evening together. This made it difficult for me to concentrate and focus on conversation with you. We didn't talk as much as we did during our first dinner. I wondered if my questions, put to you last time about your life and your past, made you recall too much or wearied you, so that you left the television on this time. We chatted a bit, with long pauses for eating or watching something interesting on the t.v. But I was disappointed.

I asked you about gardening and how you took interest in it. You said you've always been ; you worked in the family garden as a child and so you were introduced to gardening early on. You had an aunt - the same aunt who taught in Japan - who had a lovely Dutch Colonial in Hamburg with beautiful gardens - in particular, a rose garden that was almost as big as the Keeping Room, with a pond stocked with koi. You remembered how your children, my aunts and uncles and father, used to love feeding the fish.

I asked about your gardens out back. You told me of your vegetable garden, and your "herb" garden, which isn't in a good spot, "too much shade." You used to have another flower garden in front of the white picket fence of your vegetable garden, until one day Grandpa decided he'd plant tulips and daffodills in that spot, and you lost your little garden.

We finished our dinners. The potato salad was a reminder that spring is coming, you said. I asked if that was your favorite season. You said you like them all except for winter. You don't like ice and snow.

Twice during dinner you asked me if I had work the next day, and twice I answered that I did not. Both times you said to me, "Oh, good." You asked me a third time at the end of the evening when we were clearing dishes, but caught yourself as you remembered you'd already asked me and what my answer was. I don't think you asked me so many times out of forgetfulness, but maybe that tendency we all have to sometimes make polite conversation, asking polite questions, and not listening to the answers, to let our minds be someplace else.

I mentioned that I'd been reading through your England journal, and enjoying it very much. We talked about bits and pieces of it, and you told me more of the story of the bus driver in York, how he pulled over and had the tourists look at a stained glass window with a rose in it, and while you were leaning over to view it, he kissed you on the cheek and said some saying about "whoever gets kissed under the rose window, that's love for life!" Everyone on the bus laughed at his cheekiness, and you said you were probably "beet red." You didn't write that part down in the journal which you shared with friends and family, but you shared it with me. I believe you wanted to share it when I remarked that it appeared so many people were kind to you during your travels there. This is something that stood out to me as I read your account of the trip, and I believe it may have something to do with the way you are. You draw people to yourself, although you never try to be the center of attention. You take a genuine interest in others, and you don't needlessly set up enemies for yourself. You are a kind and gentle person, the kind of person people want to do nice things for, such as that English lady in Ely inviting you to see her back garden when she noticed you admiring her front garden; the person who was closing up shop as you arrived and who unlocked the place and gave you assistance in your genealogy pursuits, and the bus driver, the very same one who planted a kiss on your cheek, and who invited you aboard his green ticket tour bus, even though you'd purchased blue line tickets, because it was too cold a day to stand and wait.

I asked you which day of that trip was your favorite. You liked them all, every one, but you liked Lavenham the best - you felt like you were home - this mystical feeling, a ghostly sense that you'd lived another life there, or something...