TwitterJun 02 2010
Tupperware salt and pepper shakers shake out some memories . . .
Have you ever come across something that causes memories to flood your mind like waves rippling a shores edge? I had this happen the other day because of these salt and pepper shakers. I hadn’t seen a set of these in 50 thousand years and yet there they were on the counter of a family that I work for. The site of them grabbed me and transported me back to my childhood. To a time when these tall shakers puzzled me. They were so big. Huge and ugly. They stood dutifully on my step-grandparent’s table. Always ready. Always faithful to serve. Taken for granted and pepper stained exactly as these.
With unstoppable intensity memories bombarded my mind. Although I remember tremendous boredom being at my step-grandparents I don’t remember any negative memories. Except when we left. That’s when my parents would begin to bicker, even as we left the driveway. Bickering that was a straight road to intense arguing. My mother didn’t like going for our frequent Sunday afternoon visits. My step-father’s parents smoked, a lot. Drank beer. To access. But not to access when we were there, unless there was a family party. They played poker. Holey decks of cards were unashamedly stacked on the counter or table and my step-grandmother often played solitaire or played/practiced with the cards at the kitchen table where they visited when we were there. Moving them this way and then that, or fanned out in a perfect row, lifting the last, and nudging the rest so that they all flipped from front to back in perfect orchestration.
One day when I was about 6 or 7 I was there, alone. The one and only time I remember being there without my parents. They were up the country road about a quarter of a mile at a site where my step-father had put a small, inexpensive, used, travel trailer on a piece of land he had purchased from his parents. He needed a place to go, to get out of town where we lived. Where my mother wanted them to live. She had grown up in town and that’s where she liked it. He had grown in the country and felt cramped, awkward, and out of place in our house, on its tiny plot.
My parents were busy clearing the land around the trailer and setting things up inside and I was totally bored. So I asked if I might go and visit my step-grandparents (although I never referred to them as “step”). This was when my grandmother taught me how to run a deck up my arm, nudge it and have them all flip from their backs to their faces. She showed me repeatedly running them along here wrinkled arm and used her middle finger to nudge them with. I watched enthralled. Eager to learn. No one had ever taught me such a thing. My other grandmother, my mother’s mom taught me to clean dishes and the floors, how to crochet, and embroider but nothing nearly so spectacular as this.
Then she handed me the deck. I took it filled with tremendous confidence that I could repeat this trick. But it only took seconds to discover that just getting the deck to spread evenly up my small arm was a task. But I persevered. I remembered her warm smile and encouragement she shared by telling me it took her some time of practice to get it to work for her. We laughed together that day. And ate wafer cookies from a pack with a mixed variety of vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry, and she told me about the orange tree that stood proudly on her kitchen counter. It had come from Joany, her daughter. She had sent it to her all the way from California where she lived. It had an orange about the size of an acorn and I thought it was the cutest little thing. She told me how she loved it and wanted it to grow tall and strong so she could pick her own oranges.
This was the only time I remembered connecting with my grandmother on my step-father’s side. The one and only. My step-father’s trailer and the land it sat on was put up for sale and sold the next week. I remember the arguments my parents had over it. My mother hated it. She didn’t want to go up there anyway into the country. She wanted them to get their money back that they had put into it. AND she didn’t want me up there around “those people“.
We continued with our visits on Sundays where my parents and baby brother visited with them at the kitchen table, I was rallied to the living room to watch TV or preferably outside to play. Rarely invited to sit with the adults.
My step-grandparents died long, long ago but today wafer cookies are one of my total favorites. They can compete equally with Oreo’s for my attention. And the card trick? Well today I couldn’t pick up a deck and just wing it out there with great perfection however back in the day of my youth I practiced it, out of the view of my mother, off and on for years till I got it right. I think growing into longer arms helped 
Night, love ya,
Theresa Jane
-my step-grandparents had two pictures in their home…one was the famous scene of the outdoors, in the country, red barn… and this pictured below, it hung in their kitchen, I found this picture on Invisible Mikey’s blog he wrote about the artist, interestingly enough, last week, however it didn’t have the same memory evoking effect as the salt and pepper shakers . . . I always loved that picture…my mom hated it.
