April 2022: I’m No Miracle Worker
Some of my happiest memories from childhood date back to Sunday afternoon gatherings at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. Mom and her three brothers and all their family members would convene in a tiny house on Clark Street for a feast that in retrospect, I marvel at, an undertaking Grandma pulled off by herself every week for years. As the mother of four children, I can’t fathom pulling off the gargantuan feat of regularly feeding a clan of nineteen adults and children.
Grandma and Grandpa’s house was five rooms. Five tiny rooms. Furniture wasn’t arranged in each room. It was placed where it fit, like chunky pieces in an upholstered puzzle. The bed wore the bedroom that housed it. Separated from the dining room by a set of French doors, the bed sat at an angle poking one corner into the dining room making it impossible to close the doors but allowing whomever slept on the left side to scootch along the wall to lie down. The bedroom was off limits in spite of its intrusion into the dining. This left nineteen of us fit into the remaining four rooms.
Spilling through Grandma’s front door after church was a baptism into an aromatic wall of her cooking: roast beef, mashed potatoes, gravy for days. It was as if the aromas had nowhere to dissipate given the tight space, causing them to pile up like water against a dam, concentrating, building in intensity.
As each family of aunts, uncles and cousins arrived there were hugs and greetings, laughter and busy-ness. Grandma might have turned on her record-player, still feeling high from that morning’s sermon, piping gospel music into the thick, close air. The turntable was crammed into a corner behind the dining room table, next to a hutch. Wedging oneself into that corner took care not to knock Grandma’s nick nacs onto the floor. Grandma herself failed this often as many of her most prized possessions perched on the shelves of that hutch were fractured, splintered and glued back together. Also in that room was the desk where Grandma wrote out bills, letters and talked on the phone. How did it all fit? I can’t fathom now how claustrophobic it must have been. As a kid, I was oblivious to it. We were a biggish family crammed together in closer-than-close quarters, and it was good.
Most of the adults would post up in the living room where every square inch harbored a piece of upholstered furniture. The best way to stay out of the way was to sit down and not move. At the back of the house, in the kitchen, Grandma, Mom and my aunts would be putting the final touches on the meal and setting the tables. If the dining room and living room were small, the kitchen was a miracle use of space. One 8’ wall of cabinets was home to the sink and a stove at the far end. A dinette table in that room that served as the kid’s table come meal time. On mornings when it was just her and Grandpa taking their coffee, one could reach the sink, fridge and stove from their seated position. Behind Grandpa’s chair was the door to the bathroom, a vinyl accordion-style door that led to another astonishingly small space reeking of Camay soap and Grandma’s favorite color, pink.
How was it that it never seemed too small? I bet the farm that if I experienced the same type of gathering today I’d feel so overwhelmed I’d have to escape into the yard. Yet, absolutely nothing in my memory reflects on those Sunday afternoons as being anything but magical. My uncles would turn on the console television (a beast) and crank up the Bears game so they could hear it over Grandma’s gospel music, and they’d sit on the edges of their seats yelling at the set, chain-smoking, teasing one another as brothers do, tormenting the kids as uncles will, waiting for the call that it was time to eat.
Recently, my own kids and I have been talking about gathering as a family more regularly. We need to cut it out with the excuses and agree to just do it. One son said we needed to nurture our family culture, which I thought was funny because that’s not the way my children usually speak, but also because he’s exactly right. We’re spread out but not so far flung that we can’t pull it off. When I consider how vital those memories of that long ago time on Clark Street have become, especially now that more people who were there have died than remain living, I realize how quickly it all slips away. They’re all coming to dinner soon, and I’m going to need some help. I mean, I can pull a meal together, but I’m no miracle-worker, not like Grandma.