So I am looking through my files for writing exercises to do in class tomorrow, and I ran across this little thing I wrote for a preaching/poetry class in seminary. Unedited. We had to write something that took place in our mother’s kitchen, and as I recall, it had to incorporate a color and something dead. (?!) This was way before I had kids, so the child in this story is my niece. I changed her name in this piece.

“Ewww, what is it?” Marie wrinkled her nose as she walked into the kitchen.

“Green eggs and ham,” her grandmother Jill answered, as she pulled a slab of marbled pink meat from the tiny oven. A pile of scrambled eggs stood in a cheerful bowl on the counter, tinted like a pastel Easter egg. Did she use green food coloring, or had she discovered the right proportion of blue dye to make the yellow eggs just the right color, vibrant but not too unappetizing? That question, like many other secret recipes that flow from a grandmother’s kitchen, would remain a mystery.

“Oh, like the story. I get it,” Marie giggled. “But the ham isn’t green, MaDear!” (She had called her MaDear since the beginning. Jill had requested it; she just liked the sound of the name. She even had an embroidered sweatshirt with her nickname emblazoned across the front—not unusual attire for a grandmother, but she also maintained a website dedicated to her grandchildren. She definitely smashed the stereotype of the bent-over, wrinkled and wizened old granny. But then, she was only fifty-three!)

“That’s right, it’s green eggs…” She held up the warm roast pan with its salty contents—“…and ham!”

Jill handed Marie the bowl of eggs and they exited the tiny kitchen just as Dharma the Cat was walking in for a drink of water. Just as well—the kitchen would not be big enough to hold them all.

As she watched Marie, perched atop a Dallas phone book and digging in to her Seuss-inspired feast, Jill remembered all the meals she had made, night after night for her four kids and now-ex-husband. And she remembered the Christmas Open Houses every year, for which she literally prepared for weeks. It was always a warm, delicious affair. Her oldest daughter would cruise by the table several times, picking up yet another square of fudge, or scouring the plate of pralines for the least-nutty piece. But Jill figured that she had done enough cooking to last a lifetime. She was through. Or so she thought.

Then came grandkids, and something had begun to stir in her. No, not the urge to cook elaborate concoctions, but a new awareness of the joy of shared meals, the fun of frying up canned biscuit dough for doughnuts (what could be easier?), the silly enjoyment of dripping dark drops of food coloring into fluffy eggs. The cleanup and hassle were well worth it—she saw it in Marie’s eyes and her satisfied grin.

“Save some for your brother,” Jill said. He was beginning to stir from his nap.