Strawberry jam and toast

This morning, I stumbled to the kitchen to put on a cup of coffee before making breakfast - two slices of buttered toast with strawberry jam. Without rush, I sat down to eat, news radio on and a newspaper open on my kitchen table. Biting into my toast, I glanced down at my feet, toes recently painted "Revlon red."



Phooom! I was taken straight back to my grandmother's kitchen in central Wyoming, mint green colored kitchen cabinets, red geraniums on the sill, Fiestaware dishes, and Formica table. With backcombed hair maintained through weekly visits to the hairdresser, striking blue eye shadow and red lipstick as well as a huge collection of beads and costume jewelry, my grandmother always ate toast with strawberry jam for breakfast, often while mulling over a crossword puzzle in a housedress, and always with red toenails.

Funny how such a small moment can trigger such a vivid memory. Even funnier when you can see those pieces of your personal history - family and friends - reflected in the way you go about doing things. We are who we know and have known... we have in us where we are and where we have been.

Family memories seem to strike me when I least expect it. Humidity and heat followed by a sultry summer storm take me right back to my other grandparents' farm and the summers we spent there, stealing grandma's chocolate chip cookies from the deep freeze in the basement, helping to do chores, playing Uno and rap poker with my grandpa for ice cream, picking peas in the garden, and attempting to ride Smokey, the most ornery horse. Early morning dishes clanging and the smell of pancakes, mealtimes signaled by a triangle hanging by the door, coffee for anyone who might show up, and quiet evenings eating peaches with sugar and a bit of cream on top. We fixed ourselves up to go to "town" in the car, but we liked getting dirty even better so we could help bale hay or drive around on the tractor with grandpa.

They were good summers that my brother and I spent visiting our grandparents' homes. From the time we were really small kids until we were through high school, we spent one or two weeks every summer at the North Dakota farm, and, until my grandma moved to Gillette, we spent a week each summer in the big city of Casper. The contrast between my two sets of grandparents could not have been bigger. However, I am glad that I got a chance to really know them, to understand where I came from, and to internalize those details about their habits and lives. And, I am most grateful that memories surface on quiet Saturday mornings when I least expect them.