by Michael Neal Morris
I spent a lot of afternoons with my grandparents as small boy, especially in the years between my mother’s divorce and the beginning of her marriage to my step-father. They often took care of my brothers and me while my mother worked double-shifts at a nearby Kip’s. They even dropped us off and picked us up from catechism classes, where I was preparing for my first communion. At their house, I spent most of my time with my grandmother. She, of course, made and served the requisite cookies and helped us with homework. But she also kept us busy with things to draw and color on, or she took us outside to show us her marvelous backyard garden. I loved playing in that backyard, especially when play really meant sitting under the bushes with a book, smelling honeysuckle while watching a lizard’s throat change colors on the fence, or watching my grandmother in her big sun hat prune the flowers she had coaxed to grow in the odd mix of soil found at Dallas residences. It was here she showed me how to peel and eat a pomegranate from a tree she had taken care of. Continue reading
