She. Kathryn Tucker Windham

a lot of, remembering the past.

      When I was a child, everyone rested after a big noon meal, especially in the heat of summer afternoons. Rest time was over when I heard the windlass on our well squeaking. Somebody was drawing water for lemonade, and making lemonade was my assignment. I squeezed lemons, measured sugar, stirred it well in one of Mother’s big pitchers and cooled it with chunks of ice from the dwindling block in the icebox on the screen porch.

      She reminded me that Oma, the delivery man from Mrs. Wilkinson’s icehouse, always filled the metal-lined chamber of our icebox when he made his Monday rounds in his horse-drawn wagon loaded with big blocks of ice. If I met him down the street, Oma would let me eat slivers of ice that broke off when he chipped a customer’s smaller block of ice from the big blocks on the back of his wagon.

      In the summertime, when we had iced tea and made ice cream, we needed two deliveries a week. She laughed about the summer when my brother Wilson was so involved with playing baseball that he neglected his duty of keeping the drip pan under the icebox emptied. The pan overflowed, the floor rotted and the icebox fell to the ground. Daddy was not amused.

      Being so much younger than my siblings, I was the family pet, but Daddy was strict with my brothers.

      As a teenager, Wilson had to get Daddy’s bank ready for business each day. He swept the floors, emptied the wastebaskets, sharpened the pencils, filled the inkwells, saw that there was tape in the adding machines, and filled the big jug that supplied water for the drinking fountain. All this had to be done before the bank opened at 8 a.m.

      She interrupted my train of thought by reminding me Wilson always said that our older brothers, when they didn’t have other chores, had to move the woodpile from one side of the backyard to the other, stacking it neatly. Daddy believed that idleness bordered on sinfulness.

      I have few memories of those two older brothers, Wood and Jamie. They were grown and had left home before I was born. Wood had graduated from medical school and was an ear, eye, nose, and throat specialist on the staff of the Tennessee Coal and Iron hospital in Birmingham. It humiliated him that Daddy insisted on buying reading glasses at the drugstore instead of getting prescription glasses from him.

      Jamie was married and had two daughters. Sing (Hazel) and Sugar (Dot). Sing, the eldest daughter, was my niece but she was a month younger than me. Jamie was the only one of my siblings who did not go to college and he was the only person in the whole family connection to become a millionaire.

      Wilson also got in trouble one day when he was supposed to be watching me.

      The rambling frame house with its unplanned ells and porches where I grew up in Thomasville was on a hill above the lumberyard and the railroad. We had a grand view of much of the town including the bank where Daddy worked.

      One day Daddy called Mother and asked, “Where is Kathryn?”

      “She is in the backyard playing with Wilson,” Mother replied.

      “You’d better go see,” Daddy said.

      When she went outside, Mother saw Wilson, his dogs, and me walking back and forth on the very top of the house. I was maybe three years old. Mother had what my nephew later called “a committee fit.”

      Those reminiscences are examples of how She and I spend our time now that I am within scratching distance of my ninety-third birthday. Between recalling memories, cooking, napping, taking medicine, and otherwise looking after She, there is not even an hour to spare for what I want to do!

      I do know that nothing is right since She arrived. I used to fix good, nutritious breakfasts of bacon, eggs, crunchy toast or waffles and orange juice. Not anymore. Takes too long. Takes even longer to chew!

      “Your cooking is becoming simpler and simpler,” She complains.

      “I notice you’re still eating it!”

      One of my simplest meals is sausage balls browned in an iron skillet, drained, and put in an oven-proof container with apple butter (not apple sauce) poured over them and heated until the apple butter is bubbling. With a green salad and crunchy bread, that one dish makes a satisfactory meal. So does a small baked potato stuffed with sharp cheese.

      Dessert? No more pies and cakes. Maybe ice cream from the grocery store, but more likely a treat some friend has provided. I still favor a simple concoction from childhood: saltine crackers with marshmallows on them, run into the oven until the marshmallows are lightly toasted.

      I also confess that I am an Eagle Brand condensed milk addict. I keep at least one can in my refrigerator and eat it with a spoon. My high school friend Lyles Carter Walker used to boil a can of condensed milk for four hours, let it cool and then roll it in crushed pecans. Oh, it was good! But I like it just as well plain and cold out of the refrigerator.

      Also from childhood, I like a bowl of cornbread and milk for supper, with fresh fruit for dessert.

      “You are so old you can’t remember but two ingredients for a recipe,” She said.

      “Some excellent recipes have only two ingredients,” I replied. “You seem to like well enough a bowl of sliced bananas with orange juice poured over them.”

      She couldn’t say anything to that.

She Takes Naps

      I know I spend too much time cooking, eating, and cleaning up after each meal, but everything takes so much time these days. If I didn’t have to provide She’s meals, I would have plenty of time—well, maybe not plenty, but much more. There would even be more time for naps. Taking naps is one thing She and I do not quarrel about.

      Naps are a tradition in my family. When I was growing up, Daddy used to take a short nap after dinner (midday) each day before he walked back to his office. Everything in the household was still and quiet while Daddy slept for ten minutes. I can still hear our cook, Thurza, out in the backyard threatening to wring the neck of any hen that squawked or any rooster that crowed while Mr. Jim was taking a nap.

      On Sunday afternoons, after Sunday school, church, and a big dinner, everybody in our family took a long nap. I did not often go to sleep, but I used the quiet time to memorize all the stanzas of a hymn in the Hymnal of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, or a whole chapter in the King James Version Bible—Daddy gave me that weekly assignment.

      (As a result, I seldom needed a hymn book at church through the years, and I can still quote scripture with the best of them. Now, when I worry or get upset, She often reminds me of one of those passages of comforting scripture.)

      Having grown up in the sensible Southern tradition of taking a nap after dinner, I have always been aware of the benefits of ten or fifteen minutes of complete relaxation. As a child, I watched Negro men napping on the platform of the freight depot by the railroad, moving to sunny sheltered spots on chilly days and seeking the shade in the summer.

      I also watched worshippers at our church nap during the sermon. Five members of our congregation fell asleep every Sunday morning, and I would entertain myself by betting in what order they would nod off. I laughed to myself at the absurdity of grown people falling asleep in public.

      And now, She does it. Or She would if we still went to church. I can’t recall exactly when it started, but some time ago I noticed that She was getting drowsy during the sermon, fighting to hold her eyes open. A few times, She actually drifted off. And once, to the amusement of people around us, her purse slid from her lap and clattered to the floor. It wasn’t that the sermons were boring (we were blessed with an excellent preacher), but She just couldn’t keep her eyes open. I wanted to poke her and whisper what my Aunt Bet used to say, “If you hold one foot about an inch off the floor, you won’t go to sleep.” I knew from experience, however, that is only a short-term solution.

      She finally confessed to being so fearful of going so soundly asleep that she would topple over into the lap of a pew-sharer, or, even worse, slide under the pew in front of us and have to be hauled up off the floor. The