Open Invitation for Questions – story of my southern grandma

I have been wanting to write about my family, and families that have made an impact in my life, for quite some time, and hence I’ve embarked on starting a few blogs. The daily process of writing small posts makes it less of a chore as I think of different topics. I would greatly benefit from your questions. If you could ask anything you want, anything at all, what would it be? What would you ask an AA grandmother of 80? What would you ask an AA grandfather that had served proudly in the Korean war? What would you ask of a black man of 78 who against all odds established multiple businesses, owns many properties, and now has the means to care for new generations? What would you ask of the young college educated black woman who lived in the suburbs and learned how to adapt to every type of surrounding, be it a public or private school, a Black Baptist church or a Catholic mass? What would you ask if there was no worry about being offensive?

 

Let me tell you, briefly now and hopefully in more detail later, about my grandmother from Lousianna. She’s a great woman. The matriarch of that side of the family. Has raised children in our family that were not her own. She and my grandfather took in a cousin of mine and he later went on to receive a 4 year scholarship to college. They turned a troubled kid into a straight A student. She wears over the top outfits on Sunday with the obligatory “church hat”. She cooks large meals, fit for an army. Fried catfish, collard greens, home made corn bread, black berry cobbler, on and on. She can quote Bible verses but she also can have a sharp tongue. She has stories of surviving a flood that wiped out an entire black community in Oregon. She’s owned her own businesses. She’s been a seamstress and managed an office cleaning outfit. She sewed my flower girl dress when I was a child. She taught me how to scale a fish. Since starting a family of my own, she’s sent me recipes on banana walnut muffins and honey mustard chicken.

 

What would you like to know? Perhaps it’s a bit forward of me, and I hope it’s of no insult, but if you could imagine your child having a sort of extended/virtual black family, what sort of information would you want passed on?

Tags: AA Stories, family, food, grandmother, soul food