Great Expectations, Part II

When I was a boy, my grandmother lived just down the street from us for a short time. Every few weeks my brother and I would pack up our little blue suitcases and head over to her apartment for a sleepover. Our suitcases were blue leather and had the phrase, “I’m going to grandma’s” in white lettering on the front.

The best part about going to grandma’s was not the evening spent with her, but rather the next morning, when she would cook my brother and me a country breakfast. Coming from a house where cereal was king, the eggs and sausage and pancakes that my grandma cooked were simply awesome. She always made biscuits, which was my brother’s favorite food. He would eat them loaded with butter. I ate them the same way grandma did—with a dab of honey.

I still prefer my biscuits this way, and I guess that is one of those things that grandma has left with me, now that she is gone.

The story that grandma liked to tell was of the morning that we woke up and didn’t smell the sausage in the pan. There was no butter on the table, no biscuits in the oven. On the table was a cereal box, two bowls, and a gallon of milk.

When I got home that day, I went straight to my mom and said, “Mom, you won’t believe what grandma fed us today—cereal!” I guess my mom told my grandma this story later in the day, and I bet they had a good chuckle together at the crushing of my breakfast expectations.

This was my grandma’s favorite story to tell about me, and she told it so beautifully, the way that country folks are prone to do, and I can still hear her as she delivered the punch line at the end of the story, the way she imitated the derisive tone I used when I spat out the offensive word cereal, as if she had fed us gruel.

We would laugh together every time she told that story, and despite its repetition, I never grew tired of hearing it.