There are certain items people leave behind that forever define them in our memories. For me, it is my father’s watch, my mother’s wedding ring and my husband’s black leather hat decorated with sharks’ teeth. Especially on All Souls’ Day, these treasures bring vividly to mind the love they bestowed on me and the love they left with me.  

I never knew any of my grandparents, but I was blessed with meeting my late husband’s paternal grandmother, Sadie, also called “Big Mama,” and his maternal grandmother, Gladys. Big Mama had married a Mississippi sharecropper and raised seven children. According to family lore, she loved fishing, baking and knitting afghans for her grandchildren.  

Many years ago, I traveled with Jef and his sister to Brandon, Mississippi, to visit Sadie. I had never met her before, and I was somewhat nervous, since she sounded like a down-home Southern grandma, and I wondered what she would think of an Italian- American girl whose parents hailed from New York.  

We knocked on the door of her apartment, and a plump lady in a flowery house dress answered. She immediately wrapped her arms around her two grandchildren and then embraced me as well. “You’re pretty,” she declared, and my nervousness dissolved at that moment.  

She took the three of us, plus some of Jef’s aunts and uncles, out for supper that night at an all-you-can-eat catfish restaurant. It was the first time I tasted fried pickles, and they were surprisingly good. Afterward, we all processed back to her place for slabs of utterly amazing homemade fig cake. As I devoured a second slice, she insisted I call her Big Mama, and I obliged.  

Gladys was very different from Big Mama. For one thing, she liked everyone to call her Gladys, even her children and grandchildren. She was a slim lady who enjoyed reading “National Geographic” and tooling along the back roads of Rome, Georgia, in her trusty old car. You would not catch her with a fishing pole, but she did love traveling, especially to Greece.  

Gladys lived with Callie, a small, feisty dog known to take the occasional nip out of strangers. This suited Gladys just fine, since the animal was a perfect watchdog. Upon first meeting Callie, I caught a glimpse of bared teeth, and I cringed, waiting for her to lunge. But then in a surprising move, the dog came over and gently licked my hand. “She knows you’re family,” Gladys said.  

Over the years, the two grandmothers mailed me handwritten recipes with short notes attached. Big Mama sent me the fig cake recipe and invited us to go fishing with her. Gladys sent her recipe for lemon pudding, noting her children had been known to devour the entire dessert in one sitting. She mentioned that Callie was snoozing in a patch of sun in the yard.  

Whenever I make the fig cake, I remember Big Mama’s hug, and whenever I serve the lemon pudding, I imagine Gladys reading her magazines. Both grandmothers died long ago, but I feel their presence when I unfurl their faded letters from my cookbook. Sometimes I envision the twosome sitting on a porch in heaven, trading recipes. I also see Callie resting nearby, begging for crumbs and pining for a stranger to show up, so she might take a little nip.