Grandmothers

One of my fondest childhood memories is of my maternal grandmother making a traditional Taiwanese sticky rice cake (similar to mochi) mixed with ai grass. It was summer and my grandmother had come for a visit from Taiwan. Attached to one side of our house was the "patio" that referred to a screened in room, very similar to a Florida room. It was a lovely place to sit in the summer because we could enjoy being in the fresh air without worrying about insects and listen to the summer breeze rustle the leaves of the trees.

My grandmother had brought special grass from Taiwan to make these rice cakes. The cakes were normally filled with a red bean or mung bean paste. I never liked the paste but loved the chewiness and the herbal taste of the rice cakes. We were in the patio room as I watched her mix up the ingredients and knead out the sticky cakes. She made some especially for me that didn't have any of the paste. I adored my grandmother. She was everything that a grandmother should be to a child.

My mother tells me that when I was just a toddler, after a bath I had said to her that she was not as good at giving baths as my grandmother. She asked her mother what she did that would warrant such a comment from me. My grandmother simply explained that she gave me a small wash cloth and let me play with it as long as I wanted to and only then, when I was finished was my bath over. My mother, who had plenty to do, did not have the time to let me have the luxury of this play time.

Corwin is my mother's first grandchild. My mother has never been one to be particularly enamoured by young children, but we had a feeling that her grandchild would certainly be an exception. She has been smitten since the day she first held him in the hospital. My mother, who conveniently lives next door to us, has been a great help, especially with hubby going away to work. In the first few months, my mother was over at every opportunity to give me much needed rest and to cradle, rock and spend time with Corwin. We started a running joke when my mother in law also came, that the two of them would fight over who got to hold him. Corwin was never out of someone's arms.

Now that he's older and has been eating solids, she comes over every morning to feed Corwin his breakfast. I walk the dog during this time and then Corwin goes over to her house for a visit. He returns after an hour or so and spends the rest of the day with me until his dinner time. My mother comes back over then and feeds him his dinner, while I take the dog out for his evening walk. He goes back to her house after his dinner and reappears just before his bedtime. Both the dog and Corwin are always wildly excited when they hear my mother come in and the announcing of "It's Grandma!" from me.

We have a mulberry bush in the front yard. This summer, there were many days that my mother, proudly holding her grandson would be in the bush, picking berries to share with him. She'd put her straw hat on him to shield him from the sun and it would shift and slide and cover his face and when you'd lift it up, the look of glee from a berry stained face would appear.

Lately, when he comes back from Grandma's house, and I hold out my arms to take him, he turns away and clings closely to Grandma. Suddenly, I understand that life is again repeating itself, only with a different generation. When Corwin spends the day with me, much of the time I'm setting him down and letting him play on his own so I can get some daily chores done. When he's with Grandma, all the time is devoted to him and he has a constant playmate. The bath story that my mother told me now has a whole different meaning.

A few years ago, my mother told me that my grandmother had confided in her that she had a feeling that I would always remember that day we shared in the patio making the rice cakes. I now relish in the idea that Corwin will have many more memories of spending time with his grandmother than I did and that he will look back on them as fondly as I do.