Mammy’s lap was where you sat while she fed you off her breakfast plate. A little biscuit and gravy, fried egg, cold tomato…perfect bites didn’t last past childhood.
Jeffrey’s arms and legs didn’t work like mine, and he rode around in a different kind of chair. His stuffed dog came to live with me one day. I named him Dog and loved him anyway.
Gaga’s apartment was the home of Patrick the teddy bear, and the kitchen was stocked with Milano cookies. Mama bore the burden of the grocery trips on Saturday mornings. Later they became drop ins to the nursing home.
Aunt Tish’s visit to Louisville was when she shared her recipe for croutons. Don’t skimp on the garlic and make sure the bread is stale. The post time at the restaurant inside the Derby Museum reminded us the Hot Brown lunch was getting cold.
Uncle Danny’s posh hair salon was the closest I’d ever come to a celebrity. Ma Ingalls signed a headshot there for my Daddy. The coffee bar’s golden cappuccino maker shouldn’t have been enjoyed by a child.
Marti’s gravestone was a reminder she had been a friend since kindergarten. Time passes slower on the way to seventh grade. I was too scared to go to her funeral, too scared to let the popular kids in class see how much I loved her.
Mama’s exit stage left was the most unexpected departure of all. Her glass jar of Sanka grounds stayed in the kitchen cabinet until we said goodbye to the house on Patricia Drive.
Daddy’s heart broke when Mama died and then his organs didn’t know what to do with the cancer. Our summertime breakfast trips, just the two of us became a plate for one.
Grandma Martyne was the tallest woman I had ever met, even if she really wasn’t. Her fifteen-dollar birthday checks were sent like clockwork until the year she died on my birthday.
Papaw told me after Mama and Daddy were gone, he’d adopt me, and I’d never have to worry. He didn’t like his sandwiches cut on the diagonal; he didn’t like them cut at all.
Dustin’s twenty-something years were spent driving the tractor and cleaning out cattails on the pond. He’d enjoy a glass of milk and cornbread because he was late coming in for dinner at the farm.
Aunt Sissy’s alto rendition of “HOPPY BIRTHDAY” will forever sing when the voicemails are replayed. It wasn’t a celebration until her white cake slathered with Crisco buttercream was cut into squares to share.
Daddy built the clock that sat on the mantle near the TV where Mama and I watched reruns. Their gravesite is near Marti’s in Bethany Cemetery and faces Aunt Sissy’s resting place.
Daddy’s clock sits on my corner shelf collecting dust. I can’t change the batteries or fix the time.
Tiffany (Carby) Sokolowski, ’05, is a Kentucky native skilled in the art of storytelling. She has worked as a journalist, columnist, and blogger, in addition to authoring romance novels, and children’s books co-written with her daughter, Sara. Currently Assistant Director of Admissions at Berea College, she resides in Richmond, Ky., with her husband, Eric, curly-headed kiddo, and three kitty cats.
Pensworth 