Pickles & Prohibition are for the Birds

 

I’m blessed to have known my grandparents on my mother’s side. I’ve probably spent more time with them than with anyone else in my life. My grandpa passed away several years ago, but my grandma, who is now in her 80’s is a regular part of my life. I learned a lot about life from the two of them, but in this post, I’m going to concentrate on my grandma. My grandpa deserves a post he can call his own.

First, my grandma is a great cook. She’s made several tons of comfort food throughout her life, feeding anyone who would eat. Even feeding me when I didn’t want or need to eat. It’s her way of showing people they’re loved. It can be a little frustrating, especially if you’re round like me, but it’s also really lovely. There’s nothing like a good bowl of homemade clam chowder with real cream and butter and a freshly baked loaf of bread to make you feel like someone cares. Even though she’s good at making just about anything, my grandma is actually famous for her dill pickles. I call them “poignant pickles” because they're a mixture of so many things.

She gives a jar to random strangers when she feels like it and of course always shares with her family. I can’t tell you how many times someone has said to me, “I ate that entire quart jar of pickles in one sitting, they were excellent.” or “Can you get me some more of those pickles.” Our family attorney has even settled the bill in pickles... they have to be good right?

I’m not going to share the recipe here even though my grandma would say it wouldn’t make any difference. She says her pickles are special because of the water she uses. It’s well water from the place her and my grandpa built together in 1967. She still lives there and swears that the well water is full of the right combination of minerals which in turn affects the flavor and crispness of the pickles. She’s shared the recipe with others and they never have the same result, so she could be right about the water. However, I prefer to think my grandma’s secret ingredient is a little magic. She puts a lot of love into everything she makes and I think that's what makes the pickles so special.

My grandma is also a little quirky. Sometimes... a LOT quirky, okay? She’s scared to death that I will quit my job to be a full time artist because the job means security. But my grandma risked everything in the early 1960’s to start her own beauty salon. In fact, she had a successful business for 43 years and finally retired when she was 78 years old. She also encouraged my grandpa to take risks. Before video rental was the norm, she suggested they think about starting a video store. He declined. She also suggested he buy a truck and do water-hauling for outlying communities operating cisterns, this would have also been a very good business in our area. But, he declined. Here’s the paradox: my grandpa never took a risk but always encouraged me to do what made me happy no matter what it was, even art. My grandma always took risks and doesn’t want me to leave my steady paycheck. Now you know why I’m confused most of the time.

My grandma also uses quirky turns of phrase. Anytime we were considering adopting a new dog or cat, she would say we should check the “pond” not the pound. I’m honestly not sure where that came from, probably just pronunciation, but it makes me laugh every time I hear it. When we’d watch the news together about someone who committed a crime and was getting probation, she would refer to it as “prohibition”. “He’ll probably only get prohibition...”, she would say.  Also not sure where that came from, but hilarious. It’s the little things that people do that make you love them.

And finally, my grandma loves the birds. She’s an honest to goodness “mother nature” figure even though she still wears bright pink lip stick and dyes her hair platinum blonde.  She’s in her 80‘s now. Like me, she loves to plant things, to dig in the dirt and sit in the yard and watch the birds. This connection or similarity I have to her was something I didn’t fully appreciate until the last year or so. It’s because of her that I love these things as well. Don’t get me wrong, my grandma can be “scary hell on wheels” and stubborn as a goat, but she can also be gentle and kind and full of heart. I’ve watched her nurse kittens with eyedroppers and hold broken birds tenderly in her hands. She looks at flowers like she can actually see God in them.  And she can grow nearly anything. And even though she fought with my grandpa over almost everything, she loved him with all her heart. And he loved her back.

Some time after he passed, we were talking about her “ladies”, her friends and customers from the beauty shop. She said a lot of them were on the look out for boyfriends at the senior center. First of all, they were all ages 70 and above and I thought this was adorable. In fact, I thought “maybe there’s hope for me yet!” But I wondered if she was trying to covertly ask permission to date maybe thinking it would offend her daughters or grandchildren. I told her that if she wanted to find a companion that it was her business and that no one should hold that against her. That I wouldn’t hold it against her. It was only natural and she deserved to be happy. She said something that I will never forget. “Why would I want a boyfriend? I had my love. That’s all I need.” Yes, grandma, it turns out, that’s something else I got from you.

I Sort My Skittles

So, today, I had to call one of my co-workers into my office for a reality check. No, I wasn't giving him a reality check. I needed one of my own. You see, every once in a while I realize I'm doing something very odd and I just feel it's important to acknowledge it and then, of course, move on.

The thing I was doing today? I was sorting Skittles. Yeah, the little fruity candies. You know... "Taste the Rainbow".  No, this isn't an ad for Skittles. I also do it with M&M's. I just consider it one of the many loveable quirks I have. But I do recognize that I probably should keep those quirks in check from time to time. So, I called in my co-worker who is a friend and was about to say something when he noticed that my Skittles were sorted on my desk by color. Not only were they sorted by color, but also by quantity... fewest to most. We both started laughing so hard, I was positive someone would pee their pants. I'm sure it was especially ironic considering the state of my desk. I keep telling people that their going to do a "Hoarders: Office Edition" right here in my office!

He said "Did you actually count them?" To which I replied "Of course not, I eyeball it, counting them would just be anal." Then we laughed again. But now that I look at the picture I took, I see I should've switched the green and the yellow. Clearly there are fewer green than yellow, but again, I'm just eyeballing.

Quite seriously, I think it's me just lending a hand to the Skittles quality control people. I love finding out if the colors are equally distributed in the bag. This almost never happens. It doesn't happen with M&M's either (of the peanut or plain varieties). Huh? I also like to find out if the colors from least to greatest actually make the rainbow that Skittles uses in their advertising. It's fascinating. Most of the time, this doesn't happen either, but when it does, I feel like a real leprechaun just left me a sugar and corn syrup pot of gold! Also, yellow seems to be the color that comes up the least and this is also true for M&Ms. Weird huh? In Skittles, the color you see the most of is purple, while in M&Ms, it's brown. I would guess that there's a corporate report somewhere that says Yellow #5 is much more expensive than say Red Lake #40 + Blue Lake #2  (the colors required to make purple). And brown... well, that's gotta be cheaper than all of the other colors, right?  

Skittles are healthy as well. It says on the bag, "EXCELLENT SOURCE OF VITAMIN C". It's in all caps like that so it must be important.

I don't know where this compulsion to sort Skittles came from, but I do sometimes wonder if I have a minor case of Asberger's syndrome which is in turn a mild form of Autism. Just so you know, my spell check thinks Asberger's should be spelled astrologer's or beefburgers. I'm not joking about this at all. I really wonder that. Statistically it's entirely possible, and I don't have impeccable social skills to boot. But what I lack in manners, I make up for in empathy, so according to WebMD, I'm probably just "quirky". I like that word better than "mental".

Judging by how I keep my desk, it could be my way of controlling something... anything in a complete state of chaos... NAW, that can't be it.

It might be that I just like colors. Most artists do have some bit of quirkiness. I mean Van Gogh actually cut off his ear for love... okay maybe that was on the "mental" side of the spectrum. But you have to admit that great artists generally have some "thing" about them that is different. I even had a college art professor tell me that I could be "normal" or I could do "great art" but that I couldn't have both. I'd choose to do great art.  It's up to other people to critique it. It might also mean I have to develop other quirks if I feel myself falling into a rut of normality. I just can't let that happen. Normality is a bit soul-sucking in my opinion. So for now, I'll stick with sorting my Skittles.