Stealing Butterflies

Chapter Ten

My Grandmother used to make me eat grape pudding.

The woman couldn't cook to save her life, but her grape pudding was actually possible to swallow. The rest of her food triggered terrible gag reflexes. But, she was so darn proud of that recipe that she even stitched it on a piece of fabric and gave it to my mom when she was pregnant, to hang in the kitchen then pass down to her "many daughters."

As I'm sure you realized, that plan fell through.

So it's still hanging above the trashcan, framed (so that the little boy in the house couldn't ruin it.) My grams took the liberty to do that herself. She hung it and everything. Well, by that I mean that she spent an entire afternoon in our kitchen, yelling at my mom about how she was doing the whole thing wrong. Which she was. But, to this day, my mom still insists that it is on the wall straight, even though I can tell with my super-wolf-powers that it is more than a few degrees off.

Then again, if it were up to my mom, the thing would be shoved in a nameless drawer somewhere, since she's allergic to grapes. And seaweed. But that never happened because my grandmother is a very... persuasive person.

Anyway, throughout her entire childhood, my mom was unable to choke down her mother's single suitable dish.

That's why, once a month, Grams drives down to our house and my mom (who is an incredible cook) makes the meal. Nowadays, it's miserable, because half the time I'm busy with pack stuff and can't make it, and the other half, I'm forced into a chair that's way too small. I always end up kicking everybody, somehow simultaneously, and my elbows tend to knock things over.

And then there's always the fun conversation where my mother insults me, and repeats her "heartbreaking disappointments." And my grandmother just shakes her head and wishes I'd been a girl.

But when I was kid, it was fun. She would tell me stories about pretty princesses and shiny white horses. My grams used to be an actress, so I never really got normal fairy tales from her, which is what I bet you were picturing.

Nope.

Instead, Marilyn Monroe, the princess of Hollywood, would be stolen away by the terrible, fat Goliath and his minion Big Foot who brought her to Frankenstein's lair! And then suddenly, Brad Pitt would sweep in to save the day!

Only it was a lot more in depth than that, with more details than I care to remember.

She would also always say, "Thank my lucky stars and sweet heaven," which I never heard anybody else say. I still haven't, actually. It was, and still is, really, Gram's catch phrase. That was how our conversations always began.

I would open the front door when she got to our house, and then:

"I brought my pudding! Thank my lucky stars and sweet heaven you can have some!"

Because I wasn't allergic, that meant I got to shovel down bowls. Grams never made only a little bit. It was always cooked up to an extreme amount. She always spooned my mother a bowl too, even though she couldn't eat it, which I still don't understand.

Grams never forgot to give us the leftovers, either. My mom was always nice enough to wait a couple days before throwing it out.

See, what made me think of the infamous grape pudding was Katie's mom, who had caught me and her daughter hugging after I practically broke their door down to make sure my girl was still breathing.

"Look, I'm so sorry about this," I had begun, trying to salvage the situation. And it worked. She just smiled at me.

So Mrs. Suzanne and I got to have a nice little awkward introduction, where she giggled and winked at Katie, who looked ready to die of embarrassment. Sure, I probably should have been upset that she was upset, but she just looked too darn cute with her cheeks that red.