Ghostly Wafts

      

1956 Granny & Me

Being home during the coronavirus has got me going through some old stuff that has been sitting around. This week I opened a box from my Mom’s house and found a stash of letters and postcards my grandmother had saved! There was a letter from me from many years ago which caught my eye. In it, I mentioned that there was a cousin in Canada looking for family recipes so as to put a cookbook together. And I asked Granny if she had sent her recipe for burnt toast?

       Poor Granny! I guess I never stopped teasing her about the toast. One morning during my college years, when I was living with her, there was a really strong smell of burning toast. I ran from the bedroom to the kitchen to check it out. Of the thoughts going through my mind I worried maybe Granny had stepped out of the room – gone downstairs or out on the porch – and the bread was stuck in the toaster continuing to burn, needing my attention.  

     As I got to the doorway to the kitchen though, there was Granny with her back to me, in front of the garbage pail frantically scraping the black part off of the

toast! She was trying to make it look not burned and edible. And when she saw me, she looked embarrassed, like I had caught her trying to be sneaky! But she recovered quickly and insisted the bread was okay to eat! Of course, the smell lingered until well after breakfast was finished.

       One morning a few years ago I was at the lab. My office was in the direct opposite corner from the break-room. The smell of burnt toast wafted through the whole building. It took me right back to 277 Hastings! I walked briskly down the halls, knowing better, but a feeling of excitement was welling in me anyway! I walked into the break-room. But my grandmother was not there with her back to me scraping the black off of the toast. I looked around. She was not anywhere. I asked, “Where is my Grandmother? She was just here burning the toast!” I was half serious when I asked – that’s the power of olfactory memory. I was so close to her that morning. And this happens anytime I smell burnt toast. It’s just that the morning in the lab was the most vivid of the experiences!

       I guess Granny would not have been able to include burnt toast in the family cookbook after all. And it is not because it’s silly. And it is not because it’s something I should not have continued to tease her about forever. It is because no one could ever repeat the experience of Granny’s Burnt Toast.

Granny's B'day 1998 with Sarah & Amanda in St. Aug

 

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