Some points and phases and junctures in our lives distinctly stand out. They define who you were then and help you measure the difference between then and now.
I was 14 years and a few months old when my grandmother cooked her last meal. From the length and depth of detail she went into to infuse her preparations with love;
The simultaneously correct and generous proportions of rare ingredients;
And soul,
anyone could've surmised she was in fact cooking her last.
When everything was ready that day at lunchtime, she put this pot that belonged to the main course, on the table, opened the lid, and, if home could be found in a moment or a feeling, then that was it.
It was a coconut stew of vegetables - the simplest preparation effusing the grandest aroma. The kind only grandmothers could engender from their age-old, safely kept secrets and magic potions.
At the end of what felt like the heartiest meal of my life, I joined her in the kitchen to tidy it up and make her a cuppa of her favourite cappuccino.
From a very elegantly carved cabinet (that I often joked came from the medieval times; the least suited storage unit in her kitchen), she pulled something out. Why anyone would have an ancient cabinet full of treasures, trinkets and collectibles in a kitchen is a mystery my grandmother carried to the heavens with her.
I resolved that her kitchen was her armoury. The one she occasioned wars over her delectable food with and amassed kingdoms of family and friends with to sit, dine, laugh and feel together. That's the only answer I'd have live on after her, anyway.
Setting her cuppa aside,
She cupped one hand on my cheek and with the other pressed a medallion into my hand, looping the chain around my fingers, saying, "Wear her always as you grow, because all the hard days are coming."
My grandmother died a fortnight after that afternoon. I had been fed in belly and mind. And reassured of her presence in an emblem, no matter what. After all these years, I can just as well taste the weightiness of her words as her unforgettable coconut stew.
I'm now about four times the age I was then and, upon her inarguably invaluable advice, I've kept the medallion on and drawn strength from it through all the hard days that have come and felt like they wouldn't pass. They did eventually, only to make way for more hard days. How we make it through all of these are blessings we will neither be able to explain nor understand - ciphers timely decrypted by energies and forces and ancestors watching over you.
We experience loss, grief and love, all at once. We find lessons to keep for a lifetime. We learn that the hard days are interspersed by days so beautiful, you can't believe you lived to live them.
My grandmother found a way to protect me, long after she was gone. A medallion had been privy to generational struggles and triumphs and walked us home to the selves we ought to be. It has witnessed moments when everything aligns - the age you are, your personality, your body, whereas before there was some dissonance. And it has finally seen when its wearer is more anchored in life.
I will never be able to reproduce that coconut stew like she did. As I give up on that impossible pursuit, I'm also ready to give up what I've carried around my neck since I last tasted hers, as an adolescent setting out to find her ground.
Because today, halfway through my life, my feet finally stand solidly on my ground - the measurable difference between then and now.
And because the next in line will need it through her hard days unto the solid one.
My grandmother and I loved one another dearly. But it isn't just love that holds people together. Secrets hold us, and common history, and the belonging to and blood and blessing of legacy and the price you pay and the self you gain.
Despite the hard days, some things stay, they make us who we are meant to be and help us give what we should.
