Today's Helping of Chicken Soup for the Soul

[Guest guest]

A Gift through the Generations

By Harriet

My grandmother was of average height, had hazel eyes and salt and pepper hair

that framed a round face. She had lots of laugh lines and a smile that said she

had plenty of love to give. When you hugged her, there was plenty to hang onto.

I know because I hugged her a lot.

She wasn't beautiful by today's definition. She didn't turn heads when she

walked into a room. If you saw her on the street, you would probably have walked

by her without a second glance. There are millions of overweight grandmothers in

the world - mine would have blended right in.

But if you did walk by her, if you didn't notice her, you would have been

missing someone special.

When I was growing up, going over to my grandmother's was always a special

occasion. Although there was little money for new furniture or fancy

knickknacks, the house was filled with food and love, in equal amounts. Even now

when I think of her, more than 30 years after her death, I find it hard to

separate my memories of her from the food she made.

Mostly, I remember her baking. The kitchen table would be covered with flour and

she would be up to her arms in dough, her short, nimble fingers able to turn the

most mundane ingredients into light, flaky treats from the old country. While my

contribution to the baking was often no more than carrying ingredients from the

fridge to the table, I took my role as her assistant very seriously.

I don't think I ever felt as close to her as I did then, when it was just the

two of us in the kitchen. The older grandchildren would be out shopping or at

the movies, too old or too sophisticated to want to spend time with a

grandmother who wasn't up on the latest fashion or the music group.

Not me. I was exactly where I wanted to be - in a cramped kitchen helping my

grandmother. While she measured and kneaded, whipped and stirred, she talked to

me. Not about the big world out there, but about the little world in which we

lived. The day-to-day stuff - school, food, and family.

Mostly what she did was to make me feel loved and wanted. In that kitchen, while

I was with her, I was the most important person in her life.

I didn't inherit my grandmother's culinary talents but I did inherit her eyes,

her sense of humor and, unfortunately, her body build. For the longest time, I

saw that as a curse. Instead of being tall and slender, I was short and dumpy.

More peasant stock than royalty.

I blamed my excess padding on both my grandmother and my mother. They were the

ones who gave me one hip that's a good inch lower than the other one. Hips that

in the old country would be considered good childbearing hips, but which in this

country are too wide.

During my teens and into my twenties, every time I looked in the mirror I saw

only my defects. I was too short, too round-faced, too wide in the hips, too

this and too that. There was nothing about my body that I liked. It was all

their fault.

Now, when I look back, I can see how much time and energy I wasted blaming them

for passing on their less than perfect physical traits. Because I was so focused

on what I saw as negative traits, I forgot the thing that mattered most - their

real beauty.

I would look at the last picture ever taken of my grandmother and would feel how

much I missed her. But I was missing more than her. I was missing my heritage.

Luckily, as I got older, and maybe a little bit wiser, I began to understand and

to reach out for it.

My mother is now older than my grandmother was when she died. Over the years, my

mother has begun to look more and more like my grandmother. Her hair is starting

to go salt and pepper and she has begun to put on a little more weight around

the middle. There are also more lines on her face than there used to be.

The family resemblance is becoming stronger and stronger with each passing year.

In watching my mother grow more like my grandmother, I am rediscovering just how

beautiful my grandmother was and how beautiful my mother is. And in

rediscovering their beauty, I am also discovering mine. No, not the textbook

definition of beauty, but my own definition. One that is right for me.

I no longer complain quite as much when my mother visits and brings me boxes of

food. I now understand that like her mother before her, my mother sees food as

love. While she doesn't bake quite as well as my grandmother did, no one ever

will, my mother bakes love into everything she makes.

As I get older, the family resemblance is coming out more and more in me too.

The hazel eyes, the laugh lines, the hair with the first gray ones appearing and

yes, the figure with the full hips and expanding middle. Only now I don't see

them as a curse, but as a blessing.

All of these things form a bond between me, my mother, my grandmother and all

their mothers who came before them. I only have to look in the mirror to see

that I belong to a long line of very special women.

Of course, I expect to get more and more beautiful as I get older with each

laugh line and each gray hair tying me more closely to those who have come

before me.

After all, in my family, beauty is a family tradition.