It Runs In The Family

My grandmother passed away recently, and going through her closet with my aunt brought back many memories, some of which are amusingly Bebemocheworthy.

Grandma was a fashion plate. At 4'10" she was a petite and stunningly beautiful Southern belle, even well into old age. A career homemaker, she moved around the world with my grandfather the engineer. I always loved her stories of Brazil, India, Spain, Germany, and others. We were an amusing pair: the gorgeous housewife and the obnoxious, overly-educated feminist.

One day around 1995, when I was at the house in Houston, Grandma showed me a gift she had received from my grandfather: a tiny pistol with an ornate mother of pearl handle. And I do mean tiny. As in, so tiny that you could fit it in your evening bag. Should one ever fire said pistol, the best possibe outcome would be that you nicked your adversary badly enough for him to need a band-aid. I always imagined that the pistol even made a high-pitched sound when it fired, and envisioned it tucked into any one of Grandma's many color-coordinated evening bags.

I'll spare you the details of our favorite ladies lunch destinations, how we loved to share the beef nachos at Los Tios, or how time and time again we made her famous chocolate cake with the lemon icing that is virtually impossible to perfect. What I will say, however, is that Grandma was on a restricted diet in her final years. Because of all the medication she was taking, she was not permitted to eat salt, and she loved salt (well, just as much as she loved sugar).

When cleaning out her closet we made a curious discovery: she had stashed individual salt packets into her toiletry bag and we found a full size salt shaker hidden on the shelf in the closet. She was sassy to the end.