Hot off the presses of my grandmother’s favorite magazine, People, this past year were the headlines documenting Harper Lee’s new book, Go Set a Watchman. What grabbed the headlines wasn’t merely the hype—for Lee had come out of a long seclusion to publish her first book since To Kill a Mockingbird—but the subject matter. It is about the difficult day that comes for each of us, when we realize our parents are not the infallible gods of our childhood, but human just like us—when we can no longer view them through our Atticus Finch-tinted glasses if we wish to understand them and, in the end, love them.
Fittingly when that day came for me, it was Grandmom herself who sat with me, this woman who spent more time with me than any other except my mother, at Pica’s restaurant. I share it now, not because it was our most memorable meal together—certainly that honor falls to something she made—but because it was our most profound. We talked of the old days, and I was finally old enough to understand. Then she cried, and we ate together—two things she did a lot in our company.
Fittingly when that day came for me, it was Grandmom herself who sat with me, this woman who spent more time with me than any other except my mother, at Pica’s restaurant. I share it now, not because it was our most memorable meal together—certainly that honor falls to something she made—but because it was our most profound. We talked of the old days, and I was finally old enough to understand. Then she cried, and we ate together—two things she did a lot in our company.
