On the day we celebrated Thanksgiving, I had been baking apple pie from the seventy-year-old recipe that Lea Lea had given my mom. I was remembering the Saturdays of my early childhood while I pinched and peeled and rolled and chopped apples and dough in the present. At last I finished, and the beautiful pie, complete with the feather design my mother always cuts on the top, was deposited into the oven where it would turn to gold. As it baked, the cinnamonny aroma wafted through the house, maddening my children with butter and sugar fumes. Jordan somehow developed an affinity for apple pie when she was a toddler, and the fact that she only partakes of it twice a year has only served to amplify her love for the the most American of American desserts. While the pie was busy baking and while I was busy tidying up, the girls impatiently chanted, "apple pie! Apple pie!"
In spite of the energy and the deafening noise from the girls, the name on the recipe card took me back in time to when I was seven or so and living on Pocahontas street, where my parents had purchased their first house in Bellaire, Tx. I didn't have any grandparents within six hours drive of my house, but we had fantastic neighbors across the street who filled in the gap left by distance. Doc and Leatrice were members of what we in America call "the Greatest Generation." They had survived World War Two and then worked for forty years before retiring to a quiet life of gardening, companionship, and neighborhood gossip.
Doc and Lea were friendly and kind to my mother, who was a homemaker in a new place, and they liked my father as well; but they took a special interest in me, especially Doc. When I met him, Doc was already an old man. He had taught high school, and now he spent most of his time in a brown jumpsuit gardening. He wasn't very busy and he loved children, so was perfectly content to spend his Saturday mornings with me. I'm not sure how the tradition began, but every week, my mom would dress me up, and then walk me across the street to Doc and Lea's little old, cigarette-smokey house with the fantastic gardens full of roses and vegetables. Doc's house was a happy place for me.
Doc always planned our mornings full of activities. He would wheel me around in his wheelbarrow to all of his different varieties of roses. Some were solid red, some were yellow, but my favorites were the yellow with the red tips. Carefully avoiding the thorns, he lifted me up to smell each fragrance and then, with his orange shears, he snipped a beautiful multicolored bouquet for me, wrapping the ends carefully in a wet paper towel and foil. After the bouquet was safely inside in the turquoise vase, Doc would wheel me around in his wheelbarrow to his veggie gardens so that I could help him with planting or harvesting his radishes or cucumbers. I loved to watch his okra plants grow from week to week, with the spiny stems that reached to the telephone wires. I liked the roses and veggies, but I guess my favorite activity was painting Doc's garage door with mud. That's right, mud. Doc would mix up a big pan of mud and then let me go to town painting his white aluminum garage door with a two-inch paintbrush full of mud for as long as it interested me. I think he must have found it amusing to see such a prim, quiet little girl painting with dirt.
After most of my energy was spent, I would go inside with Doc to see what sort of delicacies Lea Lea had created. Lea Lea had been a home economics teacher in the forties, when no one was trying to cut all the delicious calories out of home cooking, so she always had cookies and other beautiful things on hand to eat. Lea Lea could bake and sew like you wouldn't believe, and she was happy to share her expertise and her possessions. I have some of the costume jewelry from the forties that she gave my mom. I have her recipes, also given to my mom. I even have the beautiful suit she made for herself in 1946, when Doc brought her black velvet from when he fought in France in World War Two. After my mom gave it to me a few years ago, I altered it to fit my girdle-less athletic (possibly boney) frame. Would you believe that when I altered it, I let out 2 inches in the waist, and took in two in the bust? Lea Lea was amazing in every way, but most amazing to me as an adult for sharing her husband and her home every saturday morning with a little kid from across the street.
After I had eaten my fill of Lea Lea's fantastic culinary creations in the kitchen, I would sit on the turquoise, textured carpet in the living room with Doc and look at the "bug Bible" while Doc lit a cigarette to relax. The book was called the "bug Bible" because of it's thickness and content. Doc would tell me all about all whichever bug we opened to that day, what it was, where it lived, and whether he had seen it. After the bug bible while he finished his late-morning smoke, he gave me quarters, nickels, dimes, and pennies for the offering plate at church the next day.
Doc was patient and kind and interested in everything I had to say, everything a grandfather should be. I remember well his kind smile and his gentle manner. I never was ready to leave his house when my mom came back to get me, but I had to go home so he could watch "The Rifleman," while he rested in his fuzzy,brown recliner, recovering from a full morning's activity. He always remembered my bouquet and asked me to come back next week. I always did, and we repeated this sweet ritual every saturday for four or five years.
In this day and age, if an older, non-related man took an interest in my children, I would build icy walls around my family to keep them safe, because the knowledge of evil is a powerful protection against child predators and good neighbors alike; but I'm glad that I didn't grow up in a world like what I know today. I treasure my Saturday-morning memories with Doc and Lea Lea; they loved me, and I love them still. The memories still come flooding back happily with the sight of home-grown roses, the apple pie recipe, the velvet suit, or the jewelry Lea gave my mother, now resting in my jewelry box. Doc and Lea Lea were fantastic neighbors. They opened their modest home and their generous hearts to a little, quiet girl with faraway grandparents, and they shared what they had--roses, vegetables, mud, cookies, and their bug bible, small things at the time, but now priceless memories to me.
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