pawpaw and granny
The smell of Granny and PawPaw’s house remains clear within my memory after all these years. I run across it occasionally and it always takes me directly back to Chickasaw, Alabama, in that little house on Jackson Street. I have smelled it at the entrance of Dillard’s in the mall, level four of the Denver International Airport, and once inside my friend Ingrid’s sun porch.
When it hits my nose the nostalgia pours over me like warm honey, and I close my eyes to find that old kitchen. I do not know exactly what the smell is made of, but I know it was installed into the walls and rooms of that house I loved so much, and I would recognize it anywhere.
When I smell it, I can see PawPaw, boiling shrimp in a big pot on the white metal stove. He has a can of beer in his hand that is hidden by a paper towel neatly fitted around the label. That was back before Southern Baptists drank openly, even though we all knew what was under there. Every few minutes, PawPaw would pour a glug of beer into the shrimp pot to add a little flavor. No one said anything about it, and he made the best shrimp we ever tasted.
The back porch was the most memorable to me. It was a place of glory and dread for me, depending on the time of day. We would often arrive to the house in the evening after my parents got off work. Montgomery was three hours away, and we only came every few months.
Mobile was especially rainy and humid, and at night the cockroaches would come out from all sides. Mobile is famous for those beautiful, ancient trees and the roaches lived around them and anywhere there was water. I was born with a special brand of terror that was limited only to this type of bug. They are fast, unpredictable, and have wings. Most disturbingly, they can fly. I would worry for days ahead of time before we got to Granny and Paw Paw’s about crossing their path, and reality would often live up to my imagination of these slippery creatures.
When we would pull up in the driveway, my eyes would already be scanning the carport. I do not know if my parents knew my silent worry, but I would try to not look down. I would eventually gather my nerve and run across the concrete porch, up the stairs, and exhale into the warm glow of the kitchen. The relief was drenching, and I would sink into the living room furniture, soft and worn.
That same back porch was holy when it rained. It was a tin roof, and the sound of pounding rain was loud and glorious. If it was during the day, everyone would pull chairs out there to sit.
The grown-ups would have coffee, and we would gather there for hours. You could not hear each other, and the rain poured down in sheets and the sound seemed to baptize us all. Maybe it is better we could not talk, because it made the whole experience privately majestic. All the while, we were together in metal chairs and PawPaw just tapping his feet and hitting his thigh bone with his knuckles.
I know there was a lot I did not understand back then, things that were happening underneath the surface and in the background. But that rain seemed to rinse away anything that was hard, and there were so many smiles under that porch.
It was the happiest I remember seeing my dad, my Aunt Bobbie, and Granny. Rain was their special place where nothing bad could happen, and it spread throughout our whole family tree. At Granny’s funeral per her request, they played the hymn “It is Beginning to Rain.”
Even now, the rain sends me to another time and soothes something in my bones that was put there before I was formed.