I was washing the dishes this morning and, I'll admit it, I was in a particularly foul mood, when I washed a spoon that had peanut butter on it and my mood was instantly changed. They say smell is the sense that's most closely linked to memory and when I caught the smell of the peanut butter made stronger by the hot water I was reminded, vividly of my Grandmother. We used to sit together and make bird feeders out of peanut butter spread over pine cones and rolled in birdseed. My Grandmother loved birds. While I was growing up she owned a Mynah bird named Roger who could talk. She would sit Roger out on the front porch in the warm weather in his cage and my Grandfather. Somewhere Roger learned how to wolf whistle and this would get my Grandfather into considerable trouble with the high school girls walking home from school.

My Grandmother was born in 1899 to Irish immigrant parents and, until she moved in with us in Connecticut when I was 16 she lived her entire life in the same small upstate Massachusetts town. So small, in fact, that, until it closed in the early 90's, the local drug store still had a soda fountain where you could get the best milkshakes for miles.

I'm not sure when exactly she and my Grandfather married, the date was always eclipsed by the story about how a full blooded Irish Catholic eloped with a full blooded English Protestant then both went home to their respective families and no one knew they were married for a month. My Grandmother was a tiny little 4'11" redheaded Irish spitfire that my rather quiet and reserved 6' tall Grandfather, without question, adored. She would lay into him about something that set her off, he would wait until she had calmed down and say, softly, "Are you done?" and that would set her off all over again. My mother and aunt told stories of unworthy boyfriends she chased off the porch with a broom. Unfortunately my Grandfather left us long before she did. In his late 60s from cancer. As far as I know my Grandmother never dated and certainly never remarried after he was gone.

She lived through the Great Depression, the reason, I'm sure, there were always paper towels draped over every surface in her kitchen drying and why Ziploc bags were turned inside out, washed and reused until they ripped. My Grandfather was a butcher for a while and she used to tell us the story of how he and friends would go out and steal cows during the Depression to feed their families, how, during prohibition he used to bootleg whiskey. She lived through a Scarlet Fever outbreak and because she owned the largest house in town the sick children were brought there while the healthy were sent away.

When I was small, my grandmother was like a short little redheaded whirlwind. She would show up unannounced on our doorstep in her little red sports car, stay for a cup of tea and be off again. I would spend weekends at her house when my parents would go away together. Her house was magical. It was an old farmhouse converted into apartments on one side. The garage was the old barn and the old hayloft had been converted into storage space that I loved to explore. My Grandfather was a pack rat and that made exploration a true adventure. All the doors in her house were the original and could be locked with the old type skeleton keys. The pantry had a dutch door that I was forbidden to swing on (but always did anyway.) Her house was the home of things I couldn't get in my own such as Coke-a-Cola in glass bottles and Oodles of Noodles, Macaroni with just butter and Parmesan cheese, all emerging from the small ancient Frigidaire with the silver pull latch handle. It was where she taught me to tie my shoes and where we would walk to the drug store to get an ice cream cone (hers strawberry, mine chocolate), where I would ride my bike in the church parking lot across the street and climb the old cannons that decorated the park down the road. Where her enormous garden grew everything from Black Eyed Susans (still my favorite flower to this day) to green beans.

And where we would sit together at her kitchen table and make those bird feeders out of pine cones, peanut butter and bird seed and tie into the gigantic lilac bush outside the kitchen window.

My Grandmother passed on in February of 2000 a month before her 101st birthday. She lived a very long, very full and very happy life and wherever she is now....I hope there are birds.