Sometimes, usually when I’m in the kitchen, I find myself thinking about my great-grandma Minerva, Papa Jay’s mom, who had a tight, little face, wore her black hair in a bun, and made him biscuits and gravy from scratch every morning. Papa is getting to an age when he can’t remember things well or often, but this he remembers: his mom got up while their shotgun house was still dark and cut dough in circles for biscuits. Then, she took a streetcar into St. Louis to work at a dress factory. She came home to mend and make all Papa’s clothes for school, shovel coal into their woodstove for the night, and go to bed to start all over again the next day.
Papa’s dad died just a few weeks before he was born, and I cannot think of anything more painful or lonely than it must be for a woman to give birth without her husband—to hold a baby that looks like the both of you all by yourself. That kind of heartache marks a woman, and Minerva was a woman made hard by suffering. Papa never talks about her without a dear respect for how strong she was, how hard she worked, and, yes, how she made him biscuits every morning.
Papa would go on to join the Air Force and marry a woman who was, in certain ways, like his mother—but in many ways, was not. My grandma Naomi was neither rigid nor strict. She wasn’t hard, but soft. Strong but kind. And yet like my great-grandma, she made her way in the kitchen.
Thanksgiving is around the bend, and I can almost smell the ham and potatoes, green beans and rolls she made for us year upon year. It met you at the front door and came all around you, giving you a soft hug around the neck before she did. You’d round the corner, and there she’d be at the oven door, wearing her denim smock and smiling at you.
At Mema’s house, Thanksgiving didn’t come out of cans or boxes. The meal had been planned weeks ahead of time, prepped, stuffed, stirred, glazed, baked, risen, and served up quietly as a matter of course. She loved to see us eat it. She must have. Otherwise, why peel a dozen apples for pies days ahead of time and not accept help until she couldn’t stand at the sink any longer?
Today, Mom and I talked on the phone about Thanksgiving this year. It was Monday, and she was cooking chicken and stuffing for dinner and wasn’t sure how many would show up.
“Sometimes it’s five, sometimes it’s thirteen. I never know,” she laughed.
She’s learned to double and stretch things last minute. She, too, has made her way quietly in the kitchen.
These are the women I think about on particularly long, quiet, redundant days of making breakfast, scrubbing the egg skillet, making lunch, doing more dishes, then cooking dinner for two or quite a few. I come from a long line of quiet women who didn’t make their mark on the world in speeches or lectures, movements or rallies. They didn’t write books or travel the country or “make their way in the world” as so many young women today dream of doing. They made their way in their kitchens, made their marks on the people at their table, and made biscuits with a kind of faithfulness their children still remember.
And these grandmothers take their seat at a table much larger than a few generations—a long, long line of faithful women that reaches back to Sarah, Abigail, Hannah, and Ruth; Mary, Tabitha, Lydia, and Priscilla, who were wives, mothers, craftswomen, harvesters, seamstresses, and teachers. These are the women who would have breastfed Isaac and Samuel, who grandmothered King David, who served the Apostle Paul in their home, and who quietly raised a young Nazarite boy—the immortal made incarnate, the King of the Ages and Lord of Glory.
It’s here that I find my place and assume a work that is far bigger yet no loftier than homemade biscuits in the kitchen.
“She rises while it is yet night
and provides food for her household
and portions for her maidens.
…She makes linen garments and sells them;
she delivers sashes to the merchant.
Strength and dignity are her clothing,
and she laughs at the time to come.
She opens her mouth with wisdom,
and the teaching of kindness is on her tongue.
She looks well to the ways of her household
and does not eat the bread of idleness.”
~ Proverbs 31:15, 24-27
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