My Grandmother was a Bitch

     I just assigned my writing students "argument" or "controversial" topics, one being "Food in America" (Michael Pollen et al). They have come up with many of the problematic aspects of the general topic--from fast food/ obesity to the cultural effects of families who don't sit down to a meal together any more (so what?). But since I don't eat fast foods so much, and thus can't get a real energetic hate up for McDonald's (et al), when I think of writing about food, I think of my grandmother's famous chicken and noodles.
     My grandmother, Mary Caylor ala Mary Fischer, was a bitch. I have no memory of her smiling, ever. I have no memory of her offering a kind word, to any of the multitude of grandchildren she had to endure every Sunday. And, of course, I have no memory of hugs or kisses. I'm not saying they didn't happen, but as a sensitive little girl always aiming to please, I do remember her absence in my life--while she was there, right in front of me, within touching,  huggin' distance. Because my mother and aunts would not broach any conversation about their mother that was the truth as I saw it, I not only could never share my opinions about my grandmother, but I could also never bring those opinions fully to consciousness. As an adult, however, I became liberated when I found that my sister thought the same--had always thought the same--about Mary.
     Of course,  it didn't help that I had to ride out to her farm every blasted Sunday in a stuffy, 1954 Pontiac with two parents smoking cigarettes in the front seat. I was so often carsick, short and little with my nose on the same level as that felt-like fabric filled with tiny bits of smoke-strong lint. Unless I puked out the window, no one really noticed. It was a 20 mile eternity which today would be like a short spurt to a local mall in those small Upper Peninsula towns. Just for a noon-day dinner of chicken and noodles and green beans cooked with pork.
And hey! It was worth it. The bitch, the puking? All worth it!
     I'm just saying, the chicken and noodles? to die for. I remember Grandma Mary's ability with an axe. Chop off the chicken's head, blood running all over, dipping the whole chicken in boiling water, plucking all those feathers off? You think a wet dog smells foul. Well, the smell of a newly dead chicken in boiling water with its feathers still intact--for a little while at least--stops you dead. If you can breath while all this is happening you probably can't breathe.
     Hundreds and hundreds and thousands of feathers plucked off this dead chicken, until its featherless, range-fed fat and meat was dunked and left in the stewing water till the meat fell off the bones. By now the smell in the kitchen cannot be described. To try would be like trying to describe the smell of coffee without saying, "it smells like coffee." Good true chicken broth, concentrated and flavored like only Mary could. Often this broth would be put into an icebox or outside if it was winter, and the fat rose to the top of the pot, congealed and hardened. After scraping off the fat chunks, we had pure, thick, rich chicken broth that would turn jello-soft when cooled again for left overs.
     Then the noodles. Rolled out egg-dough, cut in strips and distributed all over the house on any clean surface to dry like crackling, grocery store pasta. I even learned to do this as a mom, used to have egg-noodles drying everywhere when my girls were growing.
     To reflect on experiencing Mary and her coldness along with reflecting on the way she cooked for eight children, all their spouses and their own children, at a Sunday noon dinner inspires me, an awe I did not feel in my youth. I wish I could go back and meet Mary now. In truth, her children loved her without compunction (where did that word come from?!), especially her daughters. Perhaps that was because they knew that she chose to endure an extremely lazy but charming husband--their father--who played the fiddle and showed up with his hand open for my mother's paycheck when she grew old enough to be a domestic.  I don't know. I do know that legend has it Mary once stood down a team of horses harnessed and broken loose while still totting the buggy they were hooked to. She stood her ground, right out in front of these massive animals barreling down on  her, and all I know is she lived--a long time--to tell about it, well, to have her daughters tell about it. Mary didn't talk very much.