Bread and Butter

I grew up on a farm in a rural area just outside of a small town, across the road from my paternal grandparents. My Mom and Pop were my earliest, best buddies, and even as a small child I would walk across the road to visit them almost every day. Pop would take me fishing in the pond in front of their house, or to the back pasture to feed the cows. Mom would bake sugar cookies with me or let me help her with her ironing, allowing me to sprinkle the starch water as she guided the hot iron back and forth across Pop’s shirts and her dresses.

Once I started elementary school,  Mom, my grandmother, would pick me up from school and take me back to her house to complete my homework assignments at her kitchen table until my parents got home from work. Our routine rarely changed. Mom would hand me a spoon to take to the corner cabinet that always held my personal jar of crunchy peanut-butter, which I would scoop out and enjoy while I worked math problems or practiced spelling words. There was usually a small green-bottled Coca Cola to enjoy with my snack while she started cooking supper for Pop who would be in to wash up shortly.

The week before Thanksgiving, when I was ten, my Mom suggested we take a walk one afternoon after school. I usually walked with Pop, so this was novel and I was excited. I pulled on my jacket as she tied a scarf over her hair and reached for her own sweater. It was a cool, cloudy autumn afternoon. The red and brown leaves crunched under our feet, and small birds and squirrels chirped and chattered in the trees above our heads. At one point our path parted around a huge oak tree and I dodged left while she continued on to the right. “Bread and butter,” she said. I stopped, sure I had misunderstood her. I hesitated, staring at her. “What?” I asked, waiting for her to repeat or clarify what I thought she had said. She stopped and looked back at me. “Bread and butter,” she repeated, holding out her hand to me. I took her hand, still curious, as we continued on our path. “Whenever you are going along with someone you love, and your ways part, you say two things that go together, to bring you back together again,” she explained. We spent the rest of our walk coming up with things that traditionally go together – moon and stars, peanut-butter and jelly, thunder and lightening, salt and pepper, and so on.

My grandparents were farmers primarily. They were simple people who grew up together, married, created a family, worked hard through the week, worshipped on Sundays, went to the mountains or the beach occasionally, pressed on through life’s challenges and tragedies, and lived quiet lives of reflection, close to the land which allowed them to make their living.  They took care of their parents, and aging relatives and neighbors. They spent as much time as possible with their grandchildren, and loved us, encouraged us, listened to us, told us stories of their own childhood, and made their home a place of peace and joy where we were always welcomed.

While Mom and Pop’s lives on this earth concluded several years ago, the unwavering light of their mutual life continues to shine, in memories, in photographs, in traditions, and in the hope that one day we, their grands, may pass on that light through our own families. And as Bob Cratchit reflected in A Christmas Carol, “…however and whenever we part from one another, I am sure we shall none of us forget…”

I am grateful for the legacy. I pray its recollection brings you a moment of peace today in a sometimes turbulent world.

Until we are together again, bread and butter…