SEEDS PLANTED

My father was born in Stone Mountain, Georgia. A small town [now suburb] a few miles north of Atlanta.

He lived there until he was four, in a brown house in the middle of town, with a vegetable garden in the rear yard. He lived with his mother and an infant brother. I'm not certain, but I believe his mother's mother lived in that house as well, or very close by, and she boot-legged for a living. So says my father. Meaning she was one of those smart-thinking women who braved cut-throats and drunks and southern racist police who showed up at her front door [or back] for a bottle or two of top-rate liquor at a low-rate price.

My father's father, not yet a minister, was out in the world, sharecropping and job-searching, until he finally landed a decent-paying job hundreds of miles north at General Electric in Cincinnati. Soon after he sent for his wife and two small sons and they all lived together in Cincinnati in a very large two-family house he purchased himself. Several years later, their adult son, twelve years my father's senior, joined them.

My grandmother was a handsome woman. Bright brownish red skin with freckles [a characteristic often found in the remote corners of Georgia]. A very stylish woman, my grandmother also had particular impulses. She didn't eat red clay like her southern relatives, but preferred white clay. She said it was sweeter. She didn't like the dark and certainly didn't like ghosts. Her sister once told me about the time they were still living in Crawfordville, Georgia, and my grandmother was spending the night in the house of her sister's mother-in-law [a woman born during slavery and a mother of 19]. The house was once occupied by slave owners and some 50 years later it was allegedly occupied by their ghosts. One of whom had a thing for bouncing balls and opening bolt-locked doors. On this night, my grandmother, her sister, and I believe a cousin, was sleeping in the bed behind a locked door [a large dresser had been placed in front of the door, you know, in case the ghost got cocky and started opening doors during the night]. No sooner than the lights went out, the sound of balls bouncing could be heard til the wee hours of the morning, and by daylight, when all had awakened, the door was opened, but the dresser had not moved. My grandmother apparently screamed til lunch.

My grandmother was also a professional chef. Her specialty: southern cuisine. And I mean, if her food wasn't falling off the bone, or melting in your mouth, it had you dreaming about it, thousands of miles away. She put her heart and soul and art into her cooking, and when you tasted it you knew you were experiencing the work of a master.

I don't know much more about my grandmother before my recognition of her adult presence in my child's world. But I knew she had a playful sense of humor, she was welcoming, warm, and sometimes a sharp turn in her voice's tembor suggested at one time she didn't tolerate any foolishness, and that she had witnessed things in her life that could turn any soul cold.

My grandfather I knew very little. The fourth of thirteen children. He was a tall man who sat in a white reclining chair where whenever he saw me he playfully screamed, "Keith!" and scared me so much I clung to my mother's leg and started crying. He died of bone cancer when I was nine and I remember very disntinctly the sermon the Sunday following the funeral where a relative stood in the pulpit and talked about the dream my grandfather had a few weeks before his passing: His entire body had been engulfed by a white umbrella.

My father's cousin once said my grandfather was a gentle man. All-knowing, wise and the shoulder for many to cry away their tribulations. A "real" person who never judged others, and could find light in the darkest soul. She said she missed him deeply.

For so long I never saw the connection to my father's kin. Except for my darker complexion, and a few freckles on my hands, I believed for so long that the only thing connecting me with my father's people was my last name.

But here I am. Some thirty years into a recognizable journey and finally I see it. The love of cooking, my joy/fear thing with ghosts, my impulse toward a non-judgmental life... it all feels very interwoven, very deep below the molecular. Some kind of seed was planted and it continues to grow.

Until next time,

Keith