The Grandmother Way by Sara Wright

The last day of August is upon us. It’s so cool here in the hollow that I decide to winnow the second batch of my elderberries sitting outdoors where Coalie can keep a sharp eye on me from her dog bed on the porch. I note that hummingbirds are thinning out. As I begin this separation of berry from stem, I imagine that I am connected to all women everywhere through what is often called (pejoratively) ‘woman’s work’. Women who were the first seed keepers and berry winnowers like today’s Indigenous peoples that still follow the old ways. Oh, I am grateful to be sitting among them in my imagination. Still, I yearn. I wish I could share this task with just one other woman, and for a moment sink into that familiar loneliness. As I look at my purple stained fingers reflecting on how exquisite a natural dye this must make, I think I might try to collect another batch of berries to experiment with.

I am not sure just when all thought ceased but every year, I experience this phenomenon while plucking purple elderberries with my fingers… and then? Two hours later the winnowing is done, just as I begin to lose the sun. Returning to the house I finish my tinctures in minutes, pouring amethyst berries into jars and covering them with alcohol.  After steeping for six weeks this medicine will help me ward off colds and flu. Covid too. I am mindful that elderberries are a gift from nature that I receive each year. Gratitude overflows at this time of the ‘Gathering In’.

Tomorrow, tomatoes, fresh basil, garlic and peppers need to be processed for the base of winter sauces. Then come the peaches and the apples… Once more I feel deep appreciation because I can participate in preparing garden fresh foods directly. The foods I will eat or use for medicine are processed in such an intimate way. I never feel this connection at a grocery store or pharmacy and wish I did.

I’m stiff this morning from three hours standing over the stove in the kitchen while cutting, and cooking Nature’s bounty…

Finally. Tomatoes, peppers, celery, onions and garlic, fresh basil and other herbs were simmering on the stove, permeating the cabin with an Italian scent. The peaches were next. Once they were cooking, I took a third pot, chopped more garlic and fresh basil, sauteed both with olive oil and finished the pesto. Pasta was bubbling on the stove in the last pot I owned! Now it was time to puree my dog Coalie’s fresh sweet potato with the rest of her food. When that job was completed, I canned the tomato sauce, mixed herbs and pasta before peering at the apples somewhat grimly. My back was screaming. The apples could wait.

Unfortunately, the mountain of dishes could not. Starved, I swallowed some pasta noting its exquisite flavor and tackled the pots. I was exhausted. However, a profound sense of accomplishment buoyed me up. It wasn’t until I fell into bed that I had a sharp image of my grandmother standing over the stove cooking apples from her golden apple tree for my brother and for me, followed by a series images of my grandmother bent over in the garden picking vegetables, cooking and canning them all. This attention and caring for vegetable gardens, the preparation of food for the coming winter were skills my grandmother was passing onto her granddaughter. No wonder satisfaction filtered through my exhaustion. No one ever mentioned how important it was to be attached to nature in such a profound and grounded way and yet my grandmother demonstrated this priceless gift to me through her actions. No wonder I became an accomplished cook, gardener, herbalist, and wild crafter.

This is the Grandmothers Way.

I reflected on the apples…If these went by, I had many more falling from the wild apple tree that I had planted the first year I built this cabin. I was writing these words when I have an illumination. My golden apples with a pale pink blush looked exactly like my grandmother’s apples. There were two minor differences – hers were cultivated and larger in size and mine are wild and small. Neither tree ever had bugs of any kind. Both fed the local deer.

Another vivid memory surfaces. My grandmother is taking me to the window on moonlit nights to watch the deer eating apples under her tree. Here I watch the deer come all day long to feast on my apples! How is it that in all these years I had never made this grandmother/granddaughter apple – deer connection before this moment? This is when we see that there is a mysterious pattern that links generations, a tapestry that is not space-time dependent. I never became a grandmother to humans so this story will end with me, or will it? I suspect not. My grandmother’s story and mine are woven into other women’s stories, stretching back in time to the Ancient Ones, and most importantly to the Original Woman who birthed all Humankind.