I have a vivid childhood memory of visiting my grandparents on their farm in Arkansas. Their white house stood in the long shadow of a peach tree that was filled with sweet fruit ready to be picked and preserved in Ball jars lined up in the cool cellar below the rooms of the house. Across from the front porch was a tidy garden filled with row after row of corn, potatoes, okra, green beans, squash, peppers, cucumbers and peas. To the right lay the chicken coop filled with feathered hens constantly engaged in a cacophony of bird language kept under control only by the rooster who ruled the area. A little farther away was a cow that mostly sat lazily in the shade munching on hay. In back of the house my grandmother grew her flowers of every sort that gave color to the lovely rustic palate. Guarding all of it was Lady, a border collie, who commanded the attention of people and animals alike. 

It was an idyllic place where time stopped and everyday felt a bit like what living in heaven must be. My grandparents had created a little paradise in fulfilling their lifetime dreams. Best of all was how much fun they had keeping the farm running with precision. 

My grandparents arose from their slumbers long before the sun rose each day. There was always work to be done even when visitors from the city came to spend time with them. They checked on their crops, making sure that insects would not eat the precious bounty before it was time to start the picking. They managed the water and kept the weeds from going wild. Only after several hours of work did they return to the house where my grandmother cooked a full country breakfast of bacon, eggs, an homemade biscuits served with butter churned from the cow and jellies made from berries. She brewed coffee for my parents and made cocoa from scratch for me and my brothers. It was all so fresh and delicious. 

On most days my grandparents saved the chores of milking the cow and gathering the eggs for me and my brothers. I remember the first time I balked at putting my hand around the cow’s teat and squeezing to get the milk flowing. After a time I became an expert who could not wait for the ritual. With the beautiful white liquid in tin buckets we then got to watch Grandma pasteurizing it and separating the cream from the milk to make butter and whipped cream for her famous strawberry shortcake. 

Finding the eggs was better than an Easter hunt as we moved from one nesting place to another. The wary but good natured chickens only tried to poke us a couple of times with their beaks and then grew bored with our presence. The eggs came in many beautiful colors and when used fresh were more tasteful than anything I have ever enjoyed. 

I marveled at the skills that my grandparents seem to have developed without any formal training. They loved explaining why they did certain things and how important it was to keep things clean and healthy. My grandmother in particular was masterful in the kitchen making her best dishes without the aide of a cookbook because she was illiterate. Everything was just there inside her head. 

One summer we came just in time to help pick the peaches from the big tree which was bursting with the luscious fruit. Grandma warned us to cover our arms and legs but we thought it was silly to wear long sleeves and long pants in the heat of summer. When our skin began to itch so badly that she had to hose us down we finally understood why covering our skin before embarking on the picking was so important. 

Grandma was like that. She tried her best to teach us things but if we were too hard headed to listen to her she relied on the consequences of our choices to demonstrate why certain cautions were needed. She never fussed at us or insisted that she had told us what would happen. She knew that we sometimes learned our lessons from the hard knocks of reality. 

I loved exploring the hills in the back acres of my grandparents property. There were cool trails sheltered by ancient trees and in some places sparkling rivulets of water flowed under our feet. Grandma never let us drink the water as is, warning us that we would get sick without first boiling the liquid to kill any bacteria that might be hiding in the cold clear patches. She told us that we never knew what might have polluted the source of water, so we had to be very careful. 

Grandma was able to name every bird we encountered and call to them with sounds that imitated the chirps of each of them. She showed us how to find wild berries safely by rustling the patches with a stick before placing our hands where a snake might be lurking. She found beautiful rocks that we saved a souvenirs from our hikes. She told us about a nearby place where people were known to find diamonds in the raw and even suggested that if we took enough time we might find some in the hills around her farm.

At night the air became cool and we sat on the screened in veranda that ran the length of the front of the house. We watched hundreds of fireflies lighting up the yard like little fairy lights. Grandma showed us how to catch fireflies in glass jars that then became lanterns in the dark of night. When the evening was done we always had to let the little creatures go again because it was not our right to keep them hostage for more than a little time. 

Those were some of the most wonderful and relaxing times of my life. I looked forward to visiting there every single year but soon the time came for my grandparents to sell the farm and move back to the city. The pains that Grandma had felt in her belly had grown worse and the nearby doctor had found that she had end stage cancer. She and Grandpa moved to Houston only minutes away from where we lived. 

We visited often and Grandma was a stoic who still continued to grow lovely flowers and vegetables in her yard but her eyesight and her body began to fail. Her cooking for which she was renown became subpar. Her energy waned. Soon she was bed bound and dying at home because there was no safety net for the elderly back then. Medicare was still a dream project that was yet to come. My grandfather became her nurse using up his savings for the meager medical care that he was able to afford for her. She died being as strong and uncomplaining as she had ever been. She was an angel who somehow has never left my side even sixty years down the rode from when she took her last breath. Her memory is more than a blessing. It is a call for goodness and bravery on my part that I try to follow all the days of my life.