Stories are funny things. It’s hard to say when exactly they were born, or even when the first seed of an idea was planted. But if you’re wondering, I can tell you exactly where the dedication in The Kitchen Sink Sutra came from.
In case you haven’t got a copy handy (and really, why don’t you?) the dedication says:
For Memère,
Music I heard with you…
If you’ve read my book, you can probably tell that I know a thing or two about grandmothers. That’s because I was blessed with a particularly awesome one – that’s her in the picture above, as a young woman. It’s a school photo from during the Depression, when she was a just-starting-out teacher. (Much, much later, when I arrived on the scene, I actually attended Kindergarten in the very school in which she taught. I have a distinct memory of feeling very sorry for all the other kids in my class, because their grandmothers never dropped by at recess to say hi and share a snack with them.)
My grandmother was an astonishingly generous and kind person – to everyone – but especially to me. She was my biggest cheerleader, my confidante, and occasionally, my partner in crime. And although she retired from teaching the year before I was going to enter her grade, (I’m sure that was just a coincidence) I learned so much from her: I learned how to roast a turkey and how to iron a shirt; I learned how to pick myself up off the floor, have a cup of tea and keep going; and I learned to always, always show up for people when they are struggling and need a hand.
She also encouraged me to write.
Maybe because she was a teacher, she could see I had a talent for it. Or maybe she just found the things I wrote amusing. Whatever the case, she read every single thing I ever wrote – every poem, every play, every short story – always keeping tabs on my “literary career,” as she called it, even when I was twelve years old.
For a couple of years in my late teens, I wrote a column for a local newspaper. It was a bit of a chore and I was fairly certain that she was the only one who looked forward to reading my weekly take on all the exciting events at our little high school, but she was so just proud of me that I had to keep writing it. She cut out every single article and put them in albums for me. “You’ll want these someday,” she’d said, and I’d quietly rolled my eyes.
Of course she was right.
But about the dedication…
Every Christmas for more years than I can remember, I gave her a little book, a sort of a “Thought for Each Day” kind of reader. There were uplifting quotes, pictures of colourful English gardens, the odd Bible verse and some truly corny jokes. She absolutely loved it and read it every day – when I was away at university, she’d often include snippets that she’d read in that book when she wrote me letters – letters which almost always included some cash, “…just in case you need something.”
The Christmas before she died, to my great surprise, she gave me one of those books. On the inside cover she had written in her nearly perfect schoolteacher cursive: “Music I heard with you was more than music; bread I ate with you was more than bread…” Those lines are from a poem by Conrad Aiken and I remember the first time I read those words, how they took my breath away.
Imagine being so very loved.
Everyone should be so lucky.
Three months later, at the age of 83, she died rather suddenly and I think the world has been just a little poorer ever since.
I always knew I would dedicate my first novel to her and a few weeks into writing The Kitchen Sink Sutra, I found the book she’d given me that Christmas Day many years ago, in a box with some photos and the collected albums of every newspaper column I’d ever written, and then I knew what I wanted to say.
I think she’d like it.
P.
P.S. Every little thing that you do matters.