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kitchen where she was cooking her dinner: fried chicken, navybeans, and homemade biscuits. I lucked up that day because I got the whole cake (an extra large biscuit made from the leftover biscuit dough). This was my first recollection of seeing and meeting my grandparents but especially my grandmother. Fast-forwarding our lives to 1980 after the death of my grandfather, Grandma spent some time traveling between Alabama and North Carolina. She would spend part of the year at home and part of the year with us. Whenever she came to visit us I was her hangout partner. I would often go to church with her at Kingdom Hall and spend lots of time in the backyard under the tree in the shade reviewing the lesson for the week. During one of her visits, I decided that since I had to get up early in the mornings for school that I would make some sausage biscuits and put them in the freezer. The only thing I would need to do was warm them up in the oven in the morning for breakfast. Since my mother made biscuits everyday and I had witnessed them being made hundreds of times, I felt that I knew what to do. Grandma sat in the kitchen and gave me sideline instructions. After putting in all the ingredients and cutting them out with the floured glass, it was time to place them in the oven. Grandma waited with me for them to come out. Upon retrieving them from the oven, the expression on our faces indicated that something had not been done correctly. Although the biscuits were golden brown, they were sort of flat. I broke one open and the inside did not appear to be done. Grandma with a smile on her face asked me to let her see it. She told me that I had added too much shortening. I sighed and said that I'll just have to throw them away and start all over again. Grandma, sensing my disappointment, stopped me from throwing them away. She told me that she would eat them because she loved chalky biscuits. I was thrilled to death because I knew at that point that they must have been okay. My Grandma ate every last one of those biscuits, too. I know now that it was nothing but love for me that made my Grandma eat that mess because no one else in the house would touch them. I would not even eat one. The recollection that often stands out the most in one's mind is the last encounter that is had with a person. This is the case with me about Grandma. She was on her way back to Alabama from her visit with my mother. The bus she was traveling on had a two-hour lay over in Raleigh so my mother called me so that I could go there to see her before the bus left. Everything worked out well because not only did I get to see her we even had enough time for her to come back to my apartment to have dinner with me and meet some of my friends. When I arrived at the bus station, I found her talking with two elderly ladies who were traveling on the same bus with her. As I approached her, I could hear her telling the ladies that her granddaughter was coming to see her before the bus left to spend time with her. When I asked her if she wanted to go to my apartment to eat since we had some time before she needed to be back, she also told them how proud of me that she was because I could make time for an old lady. Upon arrival at the apartment, it was crowded as usual with the friends of my roommates and I. Grandma did not seem to mind, though. She talked and laughed with everyone there. When it was time to get her back to the bus station, not only did I go but my friends did as well. They were all happy to meet her and asked her to come back to see them again. All the way back home everyone talked about how much fun Grandma had been. I was always glad that she was my Grandma but on this particular day, I realized how much of a jewel she really was. I can not even express the elation that I felt when my peers spoke of her in such a loving way. That was the last time that I ever saw my Grandma, but I can not forget her big smile and big laugh as she propped herself on the stool in my apartment entertaining my friends. Grandma your physical presence has been gone for almost 14 years now, but your loving spirit will forevermore be with me. Deidre Swindell |