Tuesday, November 2, 2010

What My Grandmother taught me

When I was four, I sat up on a stool in my mom's kitchen while my grandmother taught me how to properly level baking soda with the flat end of a knife for chocolate chip cookies. It's an important skill, because if it's not measured accurately your cookies will only be good for hockey pucks, and since we now live in Florida, there's not much call for those.  Today, I teach the same technique to my daughter.  And when I was ten, Grandma taught me the art of properly shadowing flowers when using oil paints.  I took my masterpiece to school for show-and-tell where my third grade teacher, Miss Johnson thought I was Renoir! Miss Johnson then conspired with the art teacher for me to travel with her from class to class passing on Grandma's lesson.  My grandmother believed that all one needs is patience to embroider, a good eye to appreciate the beauty in the subtle differences in color, and a little bit of extra brown sugar will make everything taste a bit sweeter.  She was a wonderful mentor. 
Somewhere between the daises and the brown sugar it became self-evident that the very fabric of my soul was that of a teacher, stitched by a teacher. It wasn't until I was older I understood the philosophical life lessons she was teaching me.

In life, as well as, in front of the classroom, these things I still hold dear:
One needs to practice patience,
Train your eye to the beauty of all those glorious colors,
Everything, absolutely everything is better with a little bit of extra brown sugar.

2 comments:

  1. That was a beautiful story! And even at my age it is a lesson to remember! Thank you,

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  2. Do you remember making cookies with me in the kitchen of the lake house? It just makes me laugh when I think of the time we learned the importance of keeping the beaters INSIDE the bowl!YIKES!!

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