In case you haven’t noticed, I have a lot of associations.  Even salt and sugar bring specific people to mind: my two grandmothers.

Grandma was born in Louisiana and moved to a state closer to the North than the South (in my mind, at least), where she’s lived for over sixty years.  Grandmama was born in the North and moved to Louisiana as a child and has lived here for over seventy years.  In my mind, though, they’re both unquestionably Southern ladies, with a knack for cooking and hospitality and hosting large crowds of family.

Grandma came from a big family of brothers and had dark brown curly hair that grew almost black the older she got.  In fact, Daddy thought for the longest time that his mother-in-law dyed her hair because it was so dark—only in recent years showing touches of silver at the temples.  Grandmama was an only child with blonde curls that turned silver long before I was born.  I get my curly hair and diminutive build honest from both grandmothers.

Now, back to the kitchen where this all started, you may be wondering where the salt and sugar come in.  Well, as I grew older, I began to notice trends.

When Grandma was cooking almost anything, from actual sweets to sides of vegetables, I noticed an odd habit of hers.  She would pull out her cannister of sugar and toss a spoonful of sugar in with whatever she was making.  I had finally discovered the secret to why her food tasted so good!  In fact, when I cook vegetables on the stove, I often follow her example now, adding a dash of sugar in with my peas or beans, and thinking of her when I do.

Grandma’s habit was rather subtle and took some years for me to catch onto.  Grandmama’s passion for salt, on the other hand, is hard to miss.  While Grandma adds sugar as the secret ingredient to her meals, Grandmama unabashedly dashes salt in with her veggies, and the saltshaker accompanies most meals for good measure.  Both my grandmothers have impeccable taste, though, and never seem to oversalt or over-sweeten the food.  I think Grandmama intentionally uses a light hand with her salt and just adds more to her servings to satisfy her tastes.  In fact, I often catch her putting salt straight into her hand and popping it into her mouth like a pill.

The kitchen isn’t where the associations end.  Lemon, fruity handsoaps, and a certain type of laundry detergent invariably bring Grandma to mind.  Gardenias, sweet olives, hydrangeas, owls, and a second type of laundry detergent remind me of Grandmama wherever I encounter them.

Apparently, I’m not the only one.  I once learned from my mother that the reason she used her dish detergent all those years until the “original” scent was no longer original was because it reminded her of her grandmother, who used it too.

And so it goes…salt and sugar, lemon and apple scents, detergents, and traditions that start in the simplest ways and tie us to the ones we love and the memories we’ve made with them in their kitchens and homes.  Sheep, roosters, camelias, cows, toothpick holders, peacocks, patchouli…the list goes on along with the memories.