M Is for the Many Meals She Made

Grandmother grew up in Mississippi, a pretty little thing who got married at 17 to get out of the house. Took the train north to Chicago. She doesn't talk about that part of her life much. Only bits and pieces slip out every now and again. Like the time I was helping her get dressed and I asked her about the scars on her back, three slashes on each side of her pretty back. The kind that you see in photos at the Smithsonian.

She doesn't talk much about that or having to move aside on the sidewalk in a segregated town.

Doesn't talk much about the first husband, whom she left because he was mean. Doesn't talk much about the second husband, who was good to her but was in the service and her kids didn't want to travel the world with him, so she stayed home. She doesn't talk much about the move from Chicago to Oklahoma to Kansas, where she worked in a hospital for 25 years, cooking for more than 300 people each day, getting up at 4 every morning for the day shift. Twenty-five years -- until one day she asked for a vacation and they didn't give her the days she wanted, so she retired early. She's been retired 13 years. She is 79.

Now she hops around in her own kitchen, hopping to keep the family together.

Sometimes, I wonder how far I have gone from Grandmother's house.

It has come to this. I rarely eat greens. Who has time to wash each leaf, checking it for ladybugs? . . . I rarely eat homemade macaroni and cheese anymore. Who has time to make the roux and dice the onion finely? In fact, I don't have big Sunday dinners anymore because everything has changed and I have moved so far away from family.

On Sundays, I call Grandmother's house and she says, "Hey, baby. How you doin'? I'm so proud of you."

I hang up and turn to my own Sunday dinner, something quick: grilled salmon and brown rice, a sliced organic tomato with extra-virgin olive oil. Grandmother would have never had this on her Sunday dinner menu. My dinner is not soul food.

DeNeen Brown writes for the Style section.