We planted some kitchen herbs not too long ago and just when they began their groundbreaking Holt asked if we could plant watermelons and a lump of grief welled up from deep inside and settled in my throat. It took many swallows to get the mass back down to my belly where I have stored my grief since my grandmother's unexpected death right before Christmas. I blinked away the tears and looked for an onion to chop to act as a cover up. Who knew a hypothetical watermelon patch would be the catalyst to break the dam of grief and memories I’ve been bottling up. For five summers in a row my grandmother and I tried to grow watermelons. I remember sitting on a towel on the carpet in her den wearing a damp bathing suit from morning swimming lessons eating a watermelon. I love watermelon (my mama attributes this to the fact that I was a late June baby resulting in her consumption of somewhere around 2 tons of it at the end of her pregnancy) and always have. There is no better way to eat watermelon than the way I was eating it on that day and the way that I ate it for the better part of my childhood, which is on the floor or grass or dirt or concrete, with a pie tin and a quarter wedge between your legs. I can see my seven year old self hunched over the pie tin with sweet pink juice running down my chin and arms. If I got tired of hunching, I would pull my knees up and prop my elbows on my knees and hold the watermelon wedge in both hands before leaning in for a prolonged gobble. I would store the seeds in my cheeks or gums like a chipmunk until I could hold no more and spit them into the pan. It sounded like a rapid fire bb gun hitting tin cans. There was nothing ladylike about this feasting - and it was wonderful. My grandmother was watching me devour my fourth quarter of watermelon when she suggested that we save the seeds and plant them in her back yard. Summer after summer we tried and failed to grow a watermelon. Slugs or rain or drought or cutworms would always step in just when the vines were starting to really get going. But, year after year, I would feast on watermelons and we would plant the seeds. When my grandmother would cut into the watermelon I would beg her for and she would give me a chunk from the heart of the deep pink meat of the fruit before portioning off a wedge in a pan. She never made me wait and indulged my impatience. I missed her this spring, but I am missing her painfully this summer. I miss her for my mom, who misses her mother, and for my kids who miss their GG, and I just miss her.
I miss the woman I spent every summer of my childhood with. The woman who would lay with me until I fell asleep, who took me swimming even though she hated swimming, who made me pajamas and princess outfits and tried, on several occasions, to teach me (unsuccessfully) how to sew, who taught me the proper way to make a bed with hospital corners, who taught me how to cook and how to burn bread with every meal. Who had an intolerance for bad grammar. I miss the woman who didn’t tolerate any other kind of intolerance and believed in giving everyone a fair shot. The woman who saved my life when I had pneumonia as an infant by putting me in a steamy bathroom until I was able to breath long enough to get to the hospital. The woman who let her children and grandchildren grow and learn and make their own mistakes without judging them. The woman who let her grandchildren build forts out of her furniture and cared more about her grandchildren's happiness and joy than how much dirt they tracked into the house or how loud they were. The woman who would let eight children come spend weeks at a time with her and always said yes when they wanted to invite a friend over for supper. The woman who loved to play dominoes and rook and taught me how to win and lose gracefully. The woman who taught me to choose friends based on their character rather than popularity or what they could do for me. The woman who didn’t make a fuss if her grandchildren wanted to grow their hair long or cut it all off, or what kind of clothes they wore or the music they listened to. The woman who was understanding when I couldn’t make it down to visit but who would sit and listen to me for hours when I needed to cry or talk or just be listened to. The woman who served as a touchstone for so many of my major life decisions but always let me make my own decisions and never made them for me. The woman who was a champion of modesty and grace. The youngest daughter of five who lost her sister as a child and three brothers as an adult. The woman who did not indulge pomp and circumstance or bigotry or hate or pridefulness or pity. The woman who grew up in western Kentucky during the depression and thereby hated wastefulness, but was a prime example of generosity. The woman who battled insecurity with kindness and holding steadfast to her principles. The woman who never valued people based on the title they held or the status or money they had, but valued them based on their shared existence in the human race. The woman who let me play dress up in her old costume jewelry, slips, and heels. The woman who let my cousin Stephen keep a flock of baby ducks he found one summer, no questions asked. The woman who fell in love with a poor young country boy who found a way to go to college but found himself headed off to war, and the girl who married him and made him the happiest sailor in the Pacific. The young girl who rode a train cross-country to see her new husband in California while he was on leave and then moved from Kentucky to Indiana to Arkansas to the Mississippi Delta while he went to business school and got his PhD. The woman who loved that sailor until she took her last breath. The woman who prayed for me ceaselessly and who planted a gospel seed in my heart as a child. The woman who encouraged me to marry young when Jonathan asked me to marry him but reminded me that neither one of us was perfect. The woman who told me to serve my husband and told him to love and cherish me. The woman who loved so well and taught me to love well. The woman who taught me to take chances and enjoy life and love others and to be selfless, never by telling me, but by just living that way.
I remember leaving the grocery store the summer after my grandfather died and a middle aged black man came running up to us in the parking lot saying, “Miss Gibson, Miss Gibson,” he started to say I know you don’t remember me, but my grandmother cut him off. “Of course I remember you,” and she called him by name and they hugged and he told me that he worked for my grandmother in the cafeteria at Delta State twenty years before. They chatted in the blacktop heat for a long time and after they hugged goodbye he told me, “Your grandmother’s a fine woman, you should be proud to be her granddaughter.” I was proud to be her granddaughter and I am proud to be her granddaughter and I am blessed beyond measure to have had her for so many years. We loaded the groceries into the car and she told me about what a hard worker that young man had been for her all those years before and how proud she was to hear how well he was doing and she paused and smiled for what seemed like a long time. Then we went home to unload the groceries including the watermelon riding in my lap.
