The Things Grandma Knew

My first memory isn't of my mother.

It isn't of school or birthdays or Christmas mornings.

My first memory is of Grandma Mae standing barefoot in her garden just before sunrise, humming softly to herself while the morning mist still clung to the earth.

I was five years old.

At least, that's how old everyone told me I was.

Grandma had a basket hanging from one arm and a pair of old kitchen scissors in her hand. Her silver hair was twisted into a loose bun, and she wore the same faded blue robe she always wore before breakfast.

"Baby, don't step on the mint," she said without turning around.

I froze.

I hadn't made a sound.

I was still standing on the porch.

"How'd you know?" I asked.

Grandma smiled but kept clipping leaves.

"Know what?"

"That I was gonna step on it."

She finally turned and winked.

"Because you're always trying to walk where you ain't supposed to."

Then she laughed, and I laughed with her, though I wasn't entirely sure that was the reason.

Later in life, I would discover there were many things Grandma Mae knew before anybody told her.

At five years old, I just thought grandmas were magic.

Truth be told, I wasn't entirely wrong.

Our house sat at the end of a dirt road outside town.

Everyone knew everybody.

Everyone knew everyone's business.

And everyone knew my family.

Not always for good reasons.

Mama was beautiful.

Everybody said so.

She had wild auburn hair and a smile that could make people forgive things they shouldn't.

Unfortunately, Mama had a weakness for men who smiled the same way.

Grandpa Earl used to say she could spot trouble from a mile away and somehow mistake it for love every single time.

Grandma would smack his arm and tell him not to speak ugly about his own daughter.

But after Mama left again, I often caught Grandma crying while she washed dishes.

Back then, I didn't understand.

All I knew was that Mama came and went like summer storms.

Grandma and Grandpa were the ones who stayed.

And they loved me enough that I never once doubted I belonged.

Not even when the rest of town whispered.

By the time I was six, I knew two things about life.

The first was that Grandma's biscuits could fix almost anything.

The second was that grown folks talked quieter when children entered the room.

Which only made me listen harder.

People in town had opinions.

Lots of them.

They had opinions about Mama.

Opinions about Grandpa's brothers.

Opinions about who we were and where we came from.

Some folks acted sweet to your face and poisonous behind your back.

Grandma called those kinds of people "Sunday Christians."

I asked her once what that meant.

She smiled and said, "It means some people save all their goodness for church and leave the rest behind before Monday."

I didn't fully understand.

But I remembered it.

Grandma's words always had a way of coming back years later when I needed them.

One afternoon, while helping her hang laundry, I asked a question that made her stop pinning sheets.

"Grandma?"

"Mm-hmm?"

"Are we bad people?"

The clothespin slipped from her fingers.

She turned slowly and looked at me with eyes so soft they almost hurt.

"Oh, baby."

She knelt in front of me and tucked one of my curls behind my ear.

"No."

"People say things."

"People always say things."

"But they say Mama's bad."

Grandma sighed.

"Your mama has made mistakes."

"Did you?"

Grandma laughed.

"Honey, I've made enough mistakes to write three books."

I giggled.

"But mistakes don't make people bad."

She looked out across the hills and smiled.

"The good Lord knows the difference."

Then she pointed toward the patch of wildflowers growing by the fence.

"You see those flowers?"

I nodded.

"Nobody planted them."

"They just grow."

"Some folks call them weeds."

"But they're still beautiful."

I didn't know it then, but Grandma wasn't talking about flowers.

She was talking about us.