a grocery store, who had
no grasp of the fact that the rest of the world was really
not all that interested in listening in on their side of the
conversation.
“We’ll continue this next week,” she informed me with
a wink as she put the contraption to her ear, grabbed Max’s
hand, and backed away from me. e certainty in her tone
unnerved me.
1
“You know, if you soak those in a mix of water and a
little dish washing liquid while you’re watching television
tonight, they’ll clean right up.” Grandma gestured to my
hands as I dropped spoonfuls of cookie batter onto her
cookie sheets.
“Really?” It sounded like a great solution for my
stained fingernails. e topsoil I’d been digging in the day
before left a bit of a shadow under the white of each one.
“You always did like to dig.” She shook her head, as if
in dismay, but her wry grin told me she’d found it amusing.
“Did I?”
“You were such a quiet kid,” she went on, as if once
she’d started talking about the past, she just had to keep
going. “I worried.”
53
Georgia Beers
is was the first I’d heard of that. “Why?”
“It just seemed so unusual.”
I slid the cookie sheet into the oven, picked up my tea
and followed her to her small table.
“Children were supposed to be loud, screechy, running
around shouting at the top of their lungs with all the other
children.” She sipped her tea. “You didn’t do any of that.”
ese facts actually didn’t surprise me. I was a quiet,
fairly solitary adult; it wasn’t shocking that I would have
started out my life that way, too.
“So I did a little research,” she went on. “Your friendly,
local librarian pointed me in the right direction.”
“And what did you come up with?”
“You were an introverted child.”
I grinned, happy with the diagnosis. “And I am an
introverted adult.”
Grandma nodded. “I wasn’t the only person back then
who worried. Lots of parents who had quiet children did.”
“Was my mom like that, too? Quiet, I mean?”
e subject of my mother, Grandma’s only child,
wasn’t something we touched on frequently. In fact, we
rarely touched on it at all. Grandma almost never brought
her up and I was always too shy or embarrassed or worried
about causing anger to ask, so we went on with our lives
together as my mother took the shape of the elephant in
the room that we both knew was there, but that neither of
us was brave enough to talk about. I didn’t know much.
Samantha King had been a kind of wild child of the sixties
who (I suspected) rebelled against her rigid mother by
sneaking out, partying, and hanging with the wrong crowd
of people. She got pregnant at sixteen, had me, made a
half-hearted attempt to be a mother before leaving me
54
Starting From Scratch
with her own mother and running away just before her
twentieth birthday. Not long after that, Grandpa King left
too, not having signed on to raise another child when he
was in his fifties. Or maybe he’d been simply waiting for an
excuse to leave his wife of more than twenty years, I don’t
know. I hadn’t seen either my mother or my grandfather
since then, and I carried a lot of guilt into my adulthood,
feeling responsible for Grandma losing half her family.
“No. No, your mother was not a quiet child,” Grandma
said and I was sure I caught the ghost of a wistful smile
play at her lips. “Quite the opposite. Just like her father.
Rambunctious. Full of piss and vinegar, as we used to say. I
had a hard time keeping up with her.”
“Oh.” I sipped from my own mug, unable to put a
finger on the reason I felt disappointed.
“No, you were more like me, I think.”
at lightened the mood for me and I felt myself sit
up a little straighter. “Really?”
“If I recall correctly, my mother used to tell me how
much of a loner I was, that if given the choice between a
party and a book, I’d choose the book every
no grasp of the fact that the rest of the world was really
not all that interested in listening in on their side of the
conversation.
“We’ll continue this next week,” she informed me with
a wink as she put the contraption to her ear, grabbed Max’s
hand, and backed away from me. e certainty in her tone
unnerved me.
1
“You know, if you soak those in a mix of water and a
little dish washing liquid while you’re watching television
tonight, they’ll clean right up.” Grandma gestured to my
hands as I dropped spoonfuls of cookie batter onto her
cookie sheets.
“Really?” It sounded like a great solution for my
stained fingernails. e topsoil I’d been digging in the day
before left a bit of a shadow under the white of each one.
“You always did like to dig.” She shook her head, as if
in dismay, but her wry grin told me she’d found it amusing.
“Did I?”
“You were such a quiet kid,” she went on, as if once
she’d started talking about the past, she just had to keep
going. “I worried.”
53
Georgia Beers
is was the first I’d heard of that. “Why?”
“It just seemed so unusual.”
I slid the cookie sheet into the oven, picked up my tea
and followed her to her small table.
“Children were supposed to be loud, screechy, running
around shouting at the top of their lungs with all the other
children.” She sipped her tea. “You didn’t do any of that.”
ese facts actually didn’t surprise me. I was a quiet,
fairly solitary adult; it wasn’t shocking that I would have
started out my life that way, too.
“So I did a little research,” she went on. “Your friendly,
local librarian pointed me in the right direction.”
“And what did you come up with?”
“You were an introverted child.”
I grinned, happy with the diagnosis. “And I am an
introverted adult.”
Grandma nodded. “I wasn’t the only person back then
who worried. Lots of parents who had quiet children did.”
“Was my mom like that, too? Quiet, I mean?”
e subject of my mother, Grandma’s only child,
wasn’t something we touched on frequently. In fact, we
rarely touched on it at all. Grandma almost never brought
her up and I was always too shy or embarrassed or worried
about causing anger to ask, so we went on with our lives
together as my mother took the shape of the elephant in
the room that we both knew was there, but that neither of
us was brave enough to talk about. I didn’t know much.
Samantha King had been a kind of wild child of the sixties
who (I suspected) rebelled against her rigid mother by
sneaking out, partying, and hanging with the wrong crowd
of people. She got pregnant at sixteen, had me, made a
half-hearted attempt to be a mother before leaving me
54
Starting From Scratch
with her own mother and running away just before her
twentieth birthday. Not long after that, Grandpa King left
too, not having signed on to raise another child when he
was in his fifties. Or maybe he’d been simply waiting for an
excuse to leave his wife of more than twenty years, I don’t
know. I hadn’t seen either my mother or my grandfather
since then, and I carried a lot of guilt into my adulthood,
feeling responsible for Grandma losing half her family.
“No. No, your mother was not a quiet child,” Grandma
said and I was sure I caught the ghost of a wistful smile
play at her lips. “Quite the opposite. Just like her father.
Rambunctious. Full of piss and vinegar, as we used to say. I
had a hard time keeping up with her.”
“Oh.” I sipped from my own mug, unable to put a
finger on the reason I felt disappointed.
“No, you were more like me, I think.”
at lightened the mood for me and I felt myself sit
up a little straighter. “Really?”
“If I recall correctly, my mother used to tell me how
much of a loner I was, that if given the choice between a
party and a book, I’d choose the book every
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