TRADITIONS
Kendra Young


One of my most cherished memories is of the cake like donuts my
grandmother used to make for her grandchildren. There were at least ten
people living with my grandparents all of the time. With approximately
eighteen grandchildren converging upon them en masse, & all of them
hungry & wanting something to do, she would have us help make the donuts
or piece together a warm quilt.

The quilts were never as warm as the house in which my grandparents
lived.The house was an old two -story house : aged , white, with faded
green trim which had not been painted in ages. It had two doors: the
front door, which no one used,&a back door that never seemed to close
because of all the comings & goings. The house had a musty smell &
contained years of accumulated nicknacks & dusty clutter. If you wanted
to sit down, you first had to clear a place because every single piece of
furniture would be piled high with quilting rags, books & papers. My
grandparents never threw anything away.

Grandma did all of her cooking on an old wood burning stove in a huge
country kitchen. Because of the smoke from cigarettes & combined with
cooking grease, the once - white walls had evolved into a grayish brown
color. The room had five doors which emptied into this hub of confusion
we called a kitchen. Utility cabinets occupied every possible place
between theses doors. The stove was black cast iron with silver hardware
on the doors, four gas burners, & a warming oven on top. Grandma used
the wood burning side the most. The table sat on the cold,dirty ,well
worn linoleum floor in the middle of the room. everywhere you looked
there were heaped piles of clutter; on the table were dishes, food,
shopping bags & papers. With so many people living there it seemed as if
Grandma or one of my aunts was always cooking because, somebody was
always bound to be hungry. Grandma kept the fire stoked all day because
it was used not only for cooking, but also for heating the house.

After the breakfast rush, she would put a huge oval-shaped pan on the
fire & fill it three-fourths full with oil, so that it would be boiling
hot for the donuts. Grandma never measured anything with a cup or a
spoon; she always used her hand. To make her donuts, she used a baking
powder biscuit recipe with a few variations: four handfuls of flour, a
pinch of salt, a dash of cinnamon, a handful of sugar & no eggs. She
would put these ingredients in a large galvanized pan to mix them
together. She made a lot of donuts, so she usually "tripled her recipe
twice over".

She rolled out the dough on the flour-covered kitchen table, using a
quart jar filled with ice water to keep the dough from sticking to the
rolling surface. She cut the dough with two different jars that she had
saved just for that purpose. One was a large -mouthed ball canning jar,
& the other was a very small mayonnaise jar for the centers. After
grandma cut out the donuts, she would gently slide them into the
scalding hot oil. The wood ,hot oil, & cooking donuts would fill the
house with the savory aroma of grandma's love. She always gave us some
of the dough to play with, & when we had our own special donuts shaped
the way we wanted, she would cook them to a golden brown.

When the donuts came out of the hot oil she would roll them in a mixture
of sugar & cinnamon. The donuts had a hint of cinnamon to the taste, &
to the smell. . While they were warm , grandma would give one to each of
us. our mouths were watering, because grandma's donuts were so huge they
made the ones of today look like cookies.

My grandparents never had much money, just enough to pay the bills & buy
a few essentials such as toilet paper, sugar, thread & very little else.
They did however, teach us one of life's most valuable lessons: to give
of ourselves, which is truly the gift of love. Because of the love that
was in that old house, & the love that went into making these gifts---
the cake-like donuts & the warm patchwork quilts--- we inherited a
tradition, rich with the quality of giving to pass on to our own
children.