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By Emily Davis
My Nana was the best cook. She was most famous for her spaghetti. Even if mom or dad tried to make spaghetti using her recipe, it would never be quite like Nana’s. I remember when we were little, the boys didn’t like to eat meat sauce when Nana fixed spaghetti. They would just eat noodles with Kraft parmesan cheese and salt and pepper. But Nana did something magic to those noodles, because they just tasted better at her house. Everything tasted better at Nana’s—even Eggo Waffles. My mom would buy the homestyle frozen waffles and Log Cabin syrup—just like Nana, but they never turned out the same. Nana just had a magic touch with everything she cooked.
My Nana was a gardener. There are flower beds and flowerpots all around the outside of Nana and PawPaw’s house. She used to do all the picking and planting and pruning herself, but us grandkids always made sure it never got to be too much for her. We’d pick her flowers and use them in our soups and salads for the “restaurant” we ran on the patio. Nana loved to share her flower gardening with us though. I remember her teaching me how to take care of the flowers by pretending to talk like she was a flower. She would say in a little voice “Nana! I need some water,” and show me how to wet the soil in the pot. If she was trimming rose bushes, she would say “Nana! I need a haircut!” before she snipped away. Or if I tried to put one flower too close to another she would complain “I’m being cramped by my neighbor!”
My Nana was a clean freak. You could find a skeleton in her closet before you’d find dust on one of the dressers. The carpet and rugs always looked like they had been vacuumed two seconds before you walked in, and you could see yourself just was clearly in the reflection on the bathroom counter as in the bathroom mirrors. Everything was always spotless. But she never thought so. I would walk in and she’d say “Oh! I’m sorry this house is such a mess.” And then I would feel bad about my own room because it didn’t look that nice after I’d given it the full scrub-down.
But even though she loved to keep a clean house, Nana never fussed when we pulled all the pillows and blankets out of the crib in the pink room and turned the entire front room into a fort. Or when we strung out the paper, markers, and scissors on our kids table in the dining room and made houses for our paper snails and collars and bones for when we pretended to be dogs.
Nana loved to see us use our imagination. She used to tell me “Emily, you keep reading your books because what you have in your head no one can ever take away from you.” My Nana knew that the most important things can’t be held in your hands—they come from inside your head and your heart.
My Nana was a great comforter. Nothing could cure sickness like spending the day home from school at Nana’s. She would fix me up a little pallet on the floor of the front room and prop me up with pillows. She’d give me the remote and let me watch all the cartoons I wanted. She’d fix me a little cup of strawberry milk or bring me a bottle of Sunny D. Sometimes I would hope that I caught the flu or strep throat so I could spend the day in luxury at Nana’s.
Despite all the comfort she gave to others, my Nana was a worrier. She worried about all of us all the time. We sure gave her enough to worry about—I’m surprised she ever got any sleep. But you never would have known that these things troubled her because she carried herself with such strength. Even though she thought of everything that could have gone wrong, she believed that everything would be alright. She had hope for all of us and believed the best about each one of us. I hope some day to just come close to being the woman my Nana thought I was.
My Nana is alive. She is too remarkable of a woman to vanish with her physical presence. Every time I heat up my stove and get out my pans, my Nana will be there to remind me of the joy in cooking and how that joy is multiplied when you get to do it for other people. On the first real day of spring, when the last frost has had its say, and the dogwoods and magnolias start to blossom, and you can go outside without a jacket, my Nana will be there to remind me of the blessing of new beginnings and encourage me to take the opportunities that come my way. Every time I see flowers in the shop, in a pot on the street, or growing along the side of the road, my Nana will be there to remind me of the great power and responsibility I have to be a good steward of the gifts God has given me.
And when I eat spaghetti, my Nana will be there to remind me that some things will never be the same. But that’s okay, because if we could recreate things to be exactly like they were with Nana, that would mean that Nana wasn’t special. And if I had to say one thing about my Nana, it is that my Nana was special.
Emily Davis is a McConnell Scholar in the Class of 2022. She is studying business economics and political science at the University of Louisville.