At the age of ninety-six, Grandma Jenny slipped while shoveling snow off our front steps in a terrible snowstorm and broke her hip. She was a feisty little woman who weighed only ninety-five pounds and was four feet nine inches tall. The shovel was bigger than the grandmother. You may wonder why she would go out shoveling snow early in the morning at her old age, but it was part of her stubborn and cantankerous nature. And it was part of her tradition. She didn’t want my father to go to work and get his feet wet in the snow. It was a matter of respect for the man of the house. It was a matter of faith in her traditions. It was her way.
Grandma was from the old country, Russia to be specific. She came to the United States as a fourteen-year-old girl traveling for fifteen days on a steamer and surviving on bread and water. She lost her groceries, her money and her clothes on the trip to thieves who went after naive and unsuspecting girls like her as a normal part of refugee travel in those days. Most people thought it was the work of greedy crew members. She came to this country penniless and literally with nothing but the clothes she was wearing. But nothing could stop Grandma from making a new life in her dreamland, or bringing with her the rituals and traditions that were an innate part of her heritage, her faith, and her very being. .
Until she slipped and broke her hip, Grandma Jenny had always been in good health. None of us in the family remembered her having a cold. She attributed her good health to a secret elderberry brandy potion that she distilled in the attic of our Georgian colonial home. I have no idea where she got her elderberries or how she prepared the concoction. She was never allowed up to her special place in the attic to see what she was doing. Everything Grandma did was a secret.
Grandma took a dose of the special potion when she woke up in the morning and when she went to bed at night, she told us. As far as I know, it was the only medication she took. On rare occasions, such as holidays and her birthdays, we were all invited to join her in sipping her elderberry brandy. She was allowed to participate since she was a teenager. The boy made those things a success. No wonder Grandma was never sick. The brandy must have killed the germs. My dad didn’t like it very much. He was a Scotsman. My mother struggled to swallow it. She didn’t drink. We all participate in the ritual. No one in the family was about to insult Grandma Jenny. It was too tough a cookie to play with.
On one of the rare occasions when Grandma Jenny bothered to talk to me, communication was a problem as she only spoke Russian; I asked him what was so special about the secret potion. She gave me a half smile indicating that when I was more mature she would understand, pointing to my head. Grandma was excellent at the universal language of hand signals. I understand a little Russian, but I don’t speak the language. Fortunately for me, Grandma understood English, except when she chose to pretend she didn’t. Even the dog understood Russian because Grandma fed him and he didn’t speak anything. When she called him to come get it in Russian, he came running. Nobody disobeyed the grandmother. The dog was a huge boxer named Slugger. It was amazing to see him cringe in front of my grandmother and wait for her order so he could eat. I’m sure he didn’t act like that with my father or with me. He once jumped on my dad and pushed him so hard that he fell and dislocated his shoulder. Slugger wouldn’t dare jump on my grandmother.
After Grandma passed away, I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what was so special about her secret potion and how to make it. Grandma didn’t like measurements or recipes. She insisted that you just add a little of this and a little of that. She was the way she talked when someone wanted to know how to make her yeast-risen coffee cake or her saffron-ginger carrot caramel. Unfortunately, her secrets died with her.
I think I finally have the answer when it comes to his secret potion. It wasn’t the herbs she added. It wasn’t how high the alcohol content was. It was the love with which she made it and she distributed it to the whole family. He represented to her a fusion of old traditions and new rituals. She symbolized her faith in God, and the respect she had for our family and our Country. It was a way to celebrate her freedom. It was her way of communicating with us in a language of kindness and affection that we could all understand.
Sometimes when I have some brandy late at night to help calm me down from the stress of the day and the threat of terrorism or natural disasters, I wonder, couldn’t we all use a little of Grandma’s secret potion? to help us overcome these problems? times? The commercial stuff doesn’t seem to work anymore. It lacks the tradition of caring, kindness, and love needed to make it a special concoction. It lacks that faith-filled personal touch of Grandma Jenny. She doesn’t have her tenacious nature or her will to survive. He lacks respect.
There are some things that you can’t just put in a bottle, stick a label on, and expect it to work miracles. Sometimes you have to find the right ingredients in your own heart. Sometimes you have to distill them yourself. Sometimes the secret potion of faith is inside of you.
