Knowledge From The Nook

Everyone has a place.  A place that will always exist in their head and in their heart that anchors them to their true self.  Over the years, I’ve drifted to different spaces I’ve called home and will always relish the memories and lessons learned along the way, but when it matters, the anchor pulls me back to that One place. 

On the (probably too rare) occasions that I meditate, I find myself in a setting that would be immediately recognizable to anyone in my family.  There is a driveway, and to the left is a mature and prolific vegetable garden.  To the right is a small flat lawn where my meditative self chooses to sit and breathe in the hydrengeas and freshly mown grass.  The grass is always freshly mown, of course.  In front of me is the back door to a fairly non-descript brick house.  This spot, where my higher self takes me to find my true self is my grandparents’ back yard.  This image is the first image we’d see when coming to visit, (because everyone knows that family uses the back door and never ever has to knock) and nothing else says “Welcome home” quite like it. 

The house was very typical of its time.  Squeaky wooden floors, arched doorways, and cleverly practical built in features.  I didn’t live there.  Truthfully, I didn’t even live close after the age of five, when we moved far away.  Until then, I spent every Monday in that house at my grandmother’s side. But no matter where we lived, we came back to that place and knew it was home.  For us kids, it meant pulling into that driveway, rushing inside for a hug (from Grandma) and a handshake (from Grandpa), then a stop at the smiling friar cookie jar for a freshly baked molasses cookie (with freshly picked pecans), and then a quick inventory of the toybox that sat next to the sewing machine, and a stop at the chalkboard for some erasable art, followed by a pogo stick race the length of the front porch.  Later, when our energy had begun to fade, we might make our way in to the livingroom to the bookshelf filled with childhood favorites, or play a game of Go Fish with the gigantic playing cards that were always there. 

What we kids didn’t realize is that while we were having these wonderful adventures, some serious business was happening just feet away in the kitchen.  One of the practical built in features of this house was the breakfast nook.  Again, typical of the era – two simple benches, tucked into the kitchen wall, with a formica topped table between.  A very practical and basic feature.  The Heart of this home.  Every adult that walked in the door sat here.  Heartbreak and love, finances and lack, problems and solutions, hopes and hurdles – they were all discussed here by the grownup types – usually over some type of pie. 

This breakfast nook created Me.  Every lesson that has ever mattered in my entire existence was served up right there, at that table.  Sure, there was homemade pork sausage and vegetable soup, but the real nourishment went directly to my soul.   

My grandmother was a natural born teacher.  It’s what she always wanted to do but in her day, women didn’t just get to choose their own path and that was left for her sisters to do while she tended to the men of the family.  No matter.  She was still a teacher and spent countless hours guiding the way for many.  My grandfather is a quiet man.  “No point in talkin’ if you got nothin’ to say, eh?”  Quiet, but wise. 

So Grandma never got her classroom and Grandpa didn’t have much to say but together, they taught me everything.  Sometimes with books, sometimes with heart, but always by example.  There, in that breakfast nook, I learned: 

1. If you can read, you can do anything.  No matter what you want to do, there’s a book to tell you how.  If a dictionary, encyclopedia, Farmer’s Almanac or cookbook can’t help you, go to the library.
2. There is no one way to do anything.  Grandma spent a lot of time teaching us to read, write, and do math.  Some of us were dyslexic (though there was no such term in those days) and just didn’t get it.  She found ways to make it make sense for us.  Through music, or rhyme, or just patient practice.  She showed us through her own ingenious household inventions that there is *always* a way to do something if it matters enough to you to make it happen and that way is not always one that the ‘experts’ would agree on.
3. Words matter.  Your word means something.  If you say you’re going to do something, you have to do it.  Likewise, hurtful words are unnecessary and unwelcome.
4. Actions speak loudly.  You don’t have to.  We were not big on declarations of love or pride, but they were clearly expressed in our world with simple acts, smiles, and tender moments.  No one yelled and there was no room for anger in our place.  To this day, I can not take seriously anyone who is yelling.
5. Manners matter.   No one is better than anyone else.  But the person who is polite and respectful will be accepted before the one who is rude and abrasive. 
6. If you can help, you should.  How many times has my grandfather given money to a stranger on the street or delivered a basket of some welcome produce to a family who’d like them?  I’ll never know, because he just did it.  He didn’t talk about it or expect anything in return.  He did it because he could and because it was the right thing to do.
7. It’s never too late to start.  My Grandma never worked outside of the home until she was 61.  She thought she better contribute to social security so she could collect “when she was old”, so she got a job at the library.  She stayed there until they forced her to retire at 78.  At that point, she thought she should get a hobby so she began raising bees for honey.  She won the Beekeeper Of The Year award when she was 93.  There’s no time for Shoulda Woulda Couldas if you’re still breathing and still moving.
8. Marriage is a partnership.  But you should still be your own person.  You know those bees that Grandma loved so much?  Grandpa was deathly allergic to them.  She loved them, so he donned the suit and helped her when she asked.  Meanwhile, he had friends at the tavern, coffee dates with his brothers, and drives to nowhere in particular that were his alone.  When it mattered, they held one another up.  When it didn’t, then let each other be.
9. Shut up and listen.  You learn more by sitting back and observing, by paying attention to your surroundings, and by listening when people speak than by jumping to act, by talking first (or loudest) or by interrupting.
10. Whomever’s oldest gets to be the boss.   OK, that last one wasn’t really a lesson.  When my husband and I got engaged, we sat in this nook and asked for their advice.  Grandma said “work together” and Grandpa said “Whoever’s oldest gets to be the boss.” with a wink and a nudge to my grandmother who was, indeed, the older of the two.  She quickly agreed, knowing that *I* am the older party in our partnership.

Grandma is no longer with us.  Grandpa will turn 100 this summer and could no longer stay in his home, so the house belongs to another family now.  Maybe they kept the breakfast nook.  Maybe they didn’t.  But I kept all the lessons, so it’s all fine with me either way.