Grandma and Grapes

› CHARLESTON, 1988.....................................

The summer after my grandfather died, when I was twelve, I went to spend some time with my grandmother, who lived six hundred miles from the South Carolina Lowcountry, where we were living at the time. I learned more about food in those few weeks than I would learn in many years to come. It was Grandma’s approach to living more than her recipes, however, that so influenced me, and I am forever grateful for that one time alone with a real homemaker and her garden. There was much solace for her in her daily chores, and I, too, learned to enjoy hanging clothes on the line, watching for cracks in the soil around the potato plants, and drying apples in the sun.