Mary (Heineken) Parker
Oct. 31st, 2008 12:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
forest_choirThis Samhain, I feel the need to write a little about my beloved grandma, Mary Heineken Parker.
Born in Virginia in 1915, she moved to Maryland as a child. Grandma was a quiet woman who taught me many things: how to look for rainbows, chase snails, and spend time in the garden. I spent hours there among the hollyhocks and four o’clocks and under the snowball bush. We enjoyed picking the little pink roses that grew near her back fence.
She also taught me how to count during our weekly chicken-and-dumplings dinners. She’d mix up the dough, roll it out on her kitchen table, and cut it into squares. It was my job to count the dumplings as I dropped them into the cooking pot. One day, as I took the last of the dumplings off the table, she asked me how many dumplings were in the pot.
“Five,” I answered cheekily.
She walked over and saw that there were, indeed, only five dumplings swirling in the boiling water. I had eaten the rest of the dough raw, on its way to the pot. :D
She chuckled to herself, shaking her head at the bottomless-pit stomachs of younglings, and pulled out ingredients for a new batch.
When I started school, she read the lunch menus to me from the newspaper.
I remember asking her what a Sloppy Joe was.
“You’ll like ‘em…They’re nice and messy,” she said with a grin.
She was right.
I still love them...because they're messy. She knew her wayward granddaughter all too well.
When she became ill, she planted veggies in a kitchen window box so she wouldn't have to bend over to pick them. She grew tomatoes and cucumbers in that little window box.
Grandma passed away less than two weeks before my 7th birthday.
More than thirty years later, I still miss her. 
Born in Virginia in 1915, she moved to Maryland as a child. Grandma was a quiet woman who taught me many things: how to look for rainbows, chase snails, and spend time in the garden. I spent hours there among the hollyhocks and four o’clocks and under the snowball bush. We enjoyed picking the little pink roses that grew near her back fence.
She also taught me how to count during our weekly chicken-and-dumplings dinners. She’d mix up the dough, roll it out on her kitchen table, and cut it into squares. It was my job to count the dumplings as I dropped them into the cooking pot. One day, as I took the last of the dumplings off the table, she asked me how many dumplings were in the pot.
“Five,” I answered cheekily.
She walked over and saw that there were, indeed, only five dumplings swirling in the boiling water. I had eaten the rest of the dough raw, on its way to the pot. :D
She chuckled to herself, shaking her head at the bottomless-pit stomachs of younglings, and pulled out ingredients for a new batch.
When I started school, she read the lunch menus to me from the newspaper.
I remember asking her what a Sloppy Joe was.
“You’ll like ‘em…They’re nice and messy,” she said with a grin.
She was right.
I still love them...because they're messy. She knew her wayward granddaughter all too well.
When she became ill, she planted veggies in a kitchen window box so she wouldn't have to bend over to pick them. She grew tomatoes and cucumbers in that little window box.
Grandma passed away less than two weeks before my 7th birthday.
More than thirty years later, I still miss her.
