I have previously posted a different version of this piece. However, as my grandmother passed away last Thursday, and it was her funeral today, it seemed like a fitting tribute to repost it.
To Love is to Feed
When my sister and
I stayed at my grandmother’s place as children, she would let us collect the
eggs from her chickens. It’s possible that checking for eggs originally started
as a chore, as something we were meant to do. For me, at least, it soon turned
into a privilege. We were only meant to check once a day, but I would go out
there every hour or so. ‘Please, Grandma,’ I would beg, ‘Please can I check for
eggs again.’ My grandmother would say something in Ukrainian that I didn’t
understand, but she would always let me go.
Sometimes my
sister came with me. Sometimes I went alone. Out the back-door, into the garden
filled with flowers and fruit; beautiful flowers, potted flowers, colourful
flowers, strange looking flowers, flowers that scared me because they were
always surrounded by bees. I never learned all their names. Even if I asked my
grandmother to name each one, I would have forgotten the first one by the time
she reached the last.
Past the two cherry
trees that, when the cherries were ripe, provided as much fun as five children
could have in the days before Nintendo. My three cousins, my sister and I would
spend hours eating cherries, climbing for cherries, spitting pips at each other
until it looked as if our clothes had measles. Cherry time was a special time, a
seasonal time, almost a festival time.
These days, we
mark our calendars with yearly events like Red Nose Day or Jeans for Genes or holidays that have been
around a long time, but only recently become commercialised. Easter,
Valentines, Christmas. We turn a page in our calendar and get ready by spending
hours in shopping malls. We sigh with relief when they’re over, because we have
finished with the buying, finished with the giving and finished with the stress
for another year. Holidays and festivals are nothing new, but they seem to have
shifted to something different than what they once were. They used to be about
marking the seasons, celebrating harvests and enjoying fruit that is here now,
at this moment, but will be gone in a month or two. When we were children, part
of the appeal of cherry season, was that it did not last all year. It was like
Christmas. We enjoyed it while we could.
After passing the
cherry trees, I walked by the abundant garden; as generous as my grandmother.
Its edges overflowed with too much food to stay, too much food to eat, too much
food to cook and often too much food to give away. I heard many an argument
between my grandmother and my mother, over the subject of zucchinis. My
grandmother would always be telling my parents they had to take some zucchinis.
My mother would explain that we had zucchini plants and already more than
enough for our use. My grandmother would say that even though we had zucchinis,
we probably needed more. My grandmother always thought that people should have
more.
The old cliché
says ‘as happy as a child in a candy store’. Children in candy stores have no
idea what true happiness is. For nothing beats the happiness of a child in a
vegetable garden, where the tomatoes are eaten straight from the vine, the peas
are eaten straight from the pod, the strawberries come with dirt attached and
you can pick vegetables and take them to your grandmother, who will cook them
into something you will eat that night.
Next I would walk along
the path and pass the shed, where you pulled lights on with a cord, not a
switch, and that always smelled of potatoes, onions, dirt and tools. It
sounds uninviting, but I thought of it was a welcoming place. This was where my
grandmother kept the jars for her pickles and canning. This was where she
cooked potato pancakes, though I never quite figured out why. It was often
dusty and messy and unsorted. But it felt real, like a place that never
pretended to be anything other than what it was. I have never been to the Ukraine.
As a child I used to picture it as a big place, filled with red and black
squares, colourful easter eggs, religious icons and women in scarves. And
underneath the overpowering smell of cabbage and onion cooking, I would always
imagine the faint scent of that shed.
Finally I was at
the chickens. If no eggs were there, I felt deflated, despite the fact that I
had probably checked for them less than hour beforehand. If there was one, I
was as happy as pampushky swimming in sugar. I wanted to run back to my
grandmother and show her my find. But an egg was precious. It had value. So I
would walk, carefully and deliberately back to the house, watching that egg the
whole way.
My grandmother liked to cook big meals. She had to give people food, and lots of it. It was part of
who she was. To live, to love, was to feed.
Each mealtime
involved a variety of dishes, filling up the entire dining room table and usually
spilling out into the kitchen. Often we thought we had finished the meal, only
to find there was another five or so dishes to go. Cabbage rolls, varenyky,
stuffed peppers, salted herrings. Preceding it all was always soup, whether it
was winter or summer. Often the soup was chicken noodle, but not always. My
favourite soup was Borscht. The soup I could not stand was pea. My mother and
aunt used to tell me that it was Incredible Hulk soup. That may have impressed
my boy cousins, but it failed to work for me. Then there were the times when
soup was a big bowl of mystery that seemed more like a dare than an entrée.
As well as the
obligatory soup, all meals came with the constant refrain of ‘eat, eat’, or in
Ukrainian ‘yisti, yisti’. I only ever learned a tiny bit of Ukrainian. Most of
it is forgotten now. The word for ‘eat’, however, will be with me always. Even
my children know it. If we refused to try a specific dish, she told us to eat.
If we had space left on our plate, she told us to eat. If there was food left
on the table, she told us to eat. If we did not have a fork on its way from our
plate to our mouth, she told us to eat. If we had eaten more than we had eaten
in the previous week, she told us to eat. Yisti, Yisti, Yisti, Yisti.
The biggest meals
were at Christmas Eve and Easter. Each one was started with food that we had to
eat, whether we liked it or not. Easter was not a problem at all. The beginning
dish, the one we had to eat, was eggs from the basket of food that had been
blessed by the priest. I never thought to ask if any of the eggs I collected
were ever blessed. It seems likely. After the eggs, we had a bread called Paska
with real butter that had cloves inserted into it in the shape of a cross.
There was also cold meats, cheese and lots of other delicious foods. Everybody
liked Easter.
Christmas Eve did
not have the same universal appeal. First of all, we started our meal with a
dish made of poppy seeds called kutia. A couple of my cousins did not like this
at all. As they had to eat at least some, they would put the smallest amount
possible on their plate. Following this, there was a vegetarian meal, including
many dishes that were not that popular with us kids. Even though I love most of
my grandmother’s meals now, there were times when I would have dearly loved to
trade them in for some KFC – or Kentucky,
as we called it then. Another tradition we followed at Christmas Eve was to set
a plate aside for the people who had died, with pictures of them next to it. A
little of each dish was placed on that plate. Sometimes I half expected my
grandmother to tell those deceased relatives to ‘yiste, yiste’.
The only argument
I have ever had with my grandmother was over food. Her house is not that far
from mine. When the children were young, she often walked past and every time
she did she would knock the table and give them something to eat. A bowl of
donuts, twisted pastries or sometimes chocolates or biscuits. I did not want my
children eating such unhealthy food all the time, so I asked her not to bring
them so much. So then, instead of knocking on the door, she took to standing on
the footpath and calling until they looked through the window. When they saw
her, she would beckon them to come outside, where she would give them food away
from my eyes.
As soon as I
discovered what she was doing, I told her to stop it. I got angry. She got
angry. In the end, she refused to speak to me. Eventually I ended up
apologising, even though I knew I was in the right. Or at least I thought I
was. Though it was probably more a case where neither one of us understood the other.
Another reason why
I did not want my grandmother giving my boys food all the time was because I
did not want them to see her only as a source of treats. I wanted them to love
her for herself, not what she would give them. I thought that food and love should
be kept completely separate. It never occurred to me that maybe my grandmother
did not see things the same way.
For most of my
life, I had simply accepted that my grandmother liked to feed people. I never
thought to ask why she did this. I never wondered if she had good reasons for
it. If anything, I thought it was more a fault than anything else. Sure, it was
good to feed people. But so much? And so often? And with such unhealthy food?
Revelations can
come from the unlikeliest sources. Mine came when I was watching Masterchef.
Julie was explaining to the judges her reasons for cooking. She said that,
through her food, she wanted people to feel nurtured and loved. It seemed
apparent that, to Julie, feeding people was a way of loving them. Suddenly I
began to understand my grandmother a little better.
My grandmother did
not grow a lot of vegetables and give most of them away just because she liked
gardening. She did not provide us with huge meals, which she would tell us to
eat and eat and eat some more, just because she liked cooking. And she
certainly did not buy my boys treats just because she wanted to annoy me. She
did these things because it was her way of loving us.
Food is not just
food to my grandmother. It is precious. It has value. Even when it’s not done
in a church by a priest, it is blessed. To feed someone is not to keep them
from starvation. To feed someone is to give them something precious. It is a
loving thing to do. Food and love are not separate for my grandmother, as they
are for me. Instead, they are connected.
Once when my
grandmother was visiting, I made the offhand comment that one of my favourite
foods was her potato pancakes. Later that day, she came around with a dinner
plate piled so high with potato pancakes that its height was larger than its
width. It was the last time I ever had my grandmother’s potato pancakes. It was
the last time I will ever have them.
I never thought I
would ever say this, but I wish I had eaten more at my grandmother’s table, paid
more heed to her constant refrain or ‘yisti, yisti’, For I did not realise that
Paska, cabbage rolls, stuffed peppers, potato pancakes and varenyky would not
be around forever. I can now have Kentucky
any time I want to, not that I want to very often. It’s not so easy to go to
the food court and eat some cabbage rolls. If I had just one of those old dishes,
I would be as happy as -- well, as happy as a child in a vegetable garden.
Earlier this year,
I attended a multicultural food festival. I looked everywhere for Ukrainian food,
for something that my grandmother used to make. I could find nothing. I can’t
even remember what I ended up eating now. I know I was not impressed. Perhaps
it was for the best. My sister tells me that when she visited the Ukraine,
the cabbage rolls were not nearly as good as our grandmothers. It surprised me,
but it shouldn’t have. Even if the cabbage rolls were made in the exact same
way as my grandmother, they would be missing an essential ingredient. I know
it’s a cliché, but they would be missing love.
I have tried to
make my own Ukrainian food. I have made varenyky that fell apart, and cabbage
rolls that never came together in the first place. I had better luck with
potato pancakes. They tasted quite nice, but they weren’t like my grandmothers’.
I think they were missing the required amount of fat. Nobody cooks like my
grandmother anymore. The health professionals tell us not to. Strange, though,
that my grandmother ate like that all her life and she lived to over 90.
Last week, I
bought my sons and myself some scones from Baker’s Delight. There was a
chocolate scone, a chocolate coconut scone and a banana choc-chip scone and we
all had a different one each. I gave some of my chocolate coconut scone to each
of my boys so that they could try it. Then my youngest son tried to give me
some of his banana choc-chip scone. A banana choc-chip scone did not sound too
tempting to me, so I told him I did not want it. ‘Take it’, he said. ‘Eat it.’
I told him again that I did not want it. He told me again to eat it. Eventually
I relented and took the scone he offered. As soon as it was in my mouth, he
said, ‘I’m just like Grandma, aren’t I?’
I had never
thought of it before, but he is just like my grandmother. He loves to share
food. If I buy him a chocolate bar, there’s a good chance he’ll give me at
least some of it back. Whenever he has a packet of chips, he is always handing
them out to people. If he has a piece of cake, some of it will end up on
someone else’s plate. When he buys a treat with his pocket money, he’ll buy
something for his brother to eat as well. He loves to give food to people.
Perhaps, like my grandmother, food and love are connected for him.
I hope so. Even
though I may no longer eat the food my grandmother used to cook, there is a
chance that I may see her legacy in the way my son loves through feeding. And
who knows? Maybe one day he may even learn to make varenyky.
