Dot (Part 1)

“Fe, fi fo, fum . . . I smell the blood of an English-MON. Be he alive or be he dead, I’ll grind his bones to make MY bread!” Grandma Dot’s booming voice echoed throughout the house.

I jumped from the sound of the giant sitting next to me on the couch. Most everyone agreed: Dot was the most convincing giant Jack and the Beanstalk had ever seen.

Dot was a fierce storyteller. I loved when she read to me or told stories. I followed her around her house and breathed in the light smell of cigarette smoke, the sweetness of scotch. I sunk deep into her 1950s-style furniture, Shirley Temple (my drink of choice) in hand, and listened to her tell stories.

Sometimes she’d walk maniacally around the house, feverishly reciting nonsense poems from Edward Lear with me at her heels. At these moments she could be quite light, but at other times she was heavy, grumbling about my grandfather or staring out the window at nothing in particular. I was encircled in a big, comforting embrace most of the time.

And if she was not reading me poems or stories, we chatted endlessly. I’d giggle just watching her shake her shoulders, throw her head back, and laugh haltingly, as though she had decided to let in life just a little.

I had just turned eight and was staying at my grandparents’ house for a long weekend in the summer. My sisters were away and I had Dot to myself. She informed me that we would be up late that summer night watching an eclipse. I did not care so much about the eclipse. I only heard the words “up at 3 a.m.” form on her lips. I was staying up late!

She stood, cigarette half in her mouth, raspy voice, upper arms jiggling as she vigilantly mixed ingredients for a banana bread from scratch. I eyed the batter.

“We’ll have it during the eclipse,” she said. Every event required food.

Dot made sense of the world. Most of the time. Wading through her garden, she pointed out those vegetables that were not quite ready, those that were ripe, and those that had gone by. The vegetables that were rotten fascinated her most, while I only picked what was ripe. Old tomatoes were great in sauce, she’d tell me.

She’d squat in the middle of the garden, wistfully looking at all her herbs. She grabbed a sprig of parsley. She squinted up at me, her face weathered by age and too many years of smoking.

“In restaurants, parsley is only a garnish,” she said. (This was the 1970s mind you.) Her eyes glinted as she noshed away. “But what people don’t realize is that it’s just sooo, so good to eat! Hmmm. Here. You try some?” I finally gave in, wincing at the taste. Too bitter.

Overripe eggplant could be used for a slow simmering stew or her infamous ratatouille. Everything she gleaned had a purpose. “Nothing should be wasted,” she had said. So much so, that I watched her on the way to a neighborhood block party once, her small sturdy tanned arms gracefully overflowing with vegetables for each of her neighbors (or the ones she especially liked).

The women would shake their heads. “Dot, you are too much!”

That night at close to 3 a.m., in the glow of the refrigerator door, Dot carefully spread cream cheese on each piece of warm banana bread, handing it to me.

“Does this eclipse have a name?” I asked. “You know, like they name storms.”

Dot shook her head.

She explained the science behind the eclipse while I leaned lazily against the counter. I tried hard to pay attention while licking my fingers of melting cream cheese.

We walked to the back deck, overlooking her perennial garden. The ferns leaned softly in the moonlight. We sat legs crossed, on the deck. According to Dot, a lunar eclipse was a long process.

“You see Earth’s shadow? It’s dark on the inside, pale on the outside, and points away from the sun. Very, very far away. Earth casts a long shadow that stretches nearly a million miles into space, in order to reach the moon. The moon then passes through earth’s shadow. That is what you call a lunar eclipse.”

We gazed a while.

“The moon disappeared!” I exclaimed.

“No, no it hasn’t,” Dot replied. “Look closer.”

“I don’t see it.”

“It just looks that way.”

I looked at her dumbfounded.

“The Earth’s shadow falls on the moon, making it just appear dark,” she continued.

“The moon isn’t totally dark then?” I was slightly bewildered, preferring the moon to be either one or the other. I wanted clarity.

“No, not really. Even a totally eclipsed moon is not completely dark,” she continued.
“So even in shadow there is some light?” I asked.

“Yes,” she replied softly. “You could put it that way.” Dot sighed as though something had occurred to her just then.

Dot started to tell me the story of her father (my great grandfather), a dairy farmer in rural Connecticut.

[To continue the story, go to Dot (Part 2).]