My grandmother's house was pink when I was little. Not a flamboyant, flamingo pink, because that is not the way of farm women of 'True' German descent, but a respectable shade of Bright Blush. The paint store probably had that color on sale or clearance, I always thought, even as a kid. The Not Flamboyantly Pink house was pretty isolated back then, off of a gravel road somewhere near Camp Point, Illinois. My parents and my brother and I would visit my grandparent's farm at least once a year, usually during the summer.
My grandmother had a garden behind the pink house, where she would grow tomatoes and other vegetables. When I was much younger, I would 'help' my grandmother gather the vegetables for the evening meal. We would talk while I 'helped'. Our conversations, as I recall, consisted of lengthy monologues by me on topics of significance to me, and my grandmother's responses to all my pronouncements were always the same.
"Yup," my grandmother would say. On this particular day she was picking green beans while I 'helped'. When enough beans were picked, we took the bucket of green beans to the water pump to wash them, and then we carried the beans to the porch. There my grandmother and I sat, and we prepared the beans to be cooked. My mother came out to help, and the two older women talked.
This first time, I remember the crisp snapping sound of the beans as my grandmother would break off the ends. I tried to imitate her, but my small fingers did not have her strength. In an effort to try and solve the problem without adult assistance, I decided to bite the ends of the beans off. The taste of those green beans were, well, green. Like freshly mown grass smells; that was the taste of those beans. It was not unpleasant.
My mother noticed what I was doing at this point, and freaked out a little at the realization that I was eating everything BUT the beans, including a few small, unfortunate bugs. (I was five or six, what the heck did I know about what green beans looked like?) She began scolding me. Just the fact that my mother was concerned was enough to make my tummy hurt; I thought I was in trouble.
My grandmother was one of thirteen children. She had raised eleven of her own, including my mother. She had seen it all before, likely worse. She just sighed heavily, picked up the bucket of beans, and went into the house. The screen door punctuated her exit, and that was as effective as if she had yelled at us. My mom and I stared at each other, then got up and followed my grandmother into the house.
