Pen-demic

  Who would have thought that the COVID pandemic, ongoing lockdowns and forced solitude would give me the chance to learn more about my family than I had known before? I’ve been told that there is almost always something good that can come out of bad, and I this case I can say it was true. Time was hanging heavy and even the company of my husband needed occasional time-outs. Cleaning and decluttering were activities I could do by myself, and I did try. But I admit I am quite easily distracted. As I was looking through things stored in the basement, I came across scrapbooks that had belonged to my Mother. Before she was taken by breast cancer, the same illness that had taken Mama, my sister-in-law, Marie, had packaged up the scrapbooks and other memorabilia and sent it to me with the note, “Now you’re the keeper of the archives.” I’d always known that the scrapbooks existed. Mama had kept them in the bottom drawer of the dresser in the spare bedroom. After Daddy died, and “The Homes...

  Food is the ingredient that binds us together. As I quickly picked up a handful of groceries at Schnucks a month or so ago, I glanced down at the refrigerated items in the middle cooler. The jars of Kraft Pimento Spread immediately drew my eyes. My family had purchased and emptied enough of those tiny glass jars during my childhood that we had repurposed them as our water cups. On any normal grocery run, I would have concerned myself with the nutritional value (or lack thereof) and passed on this pimento spread. Instead, I snatched one out of the cooler and backtracked to the cracker aisle to pair it with Triscuits. Just as I had many years ago, when I returned home from the grocery store, I loaded a plate full of Triscuits slathered with pimento cheese. It threw me back to memories of weekends when my dad was working and my mom, sister, and I were hanging out at my grandparents’ house. My Grandma and Grandpa Trulove maintained a stock of the best snacks—twizzlers, bing cherries,...