Pound Cake

Despite having driven away from this place dozens of times, I never did get good at saying goodbye. It’s been more than a decade since I called this small town home but sitting behind the wheel of my SUV, I feel the lump in my throat threaten my breath as I adjust the rear-view mirror. I raise a hand in one last wave to my father as I pull away, putting the Blue Ridge Mountains behind me.

Twelve hours of highway stretch ahead, and my husband sits in the backseat with our three-month-old son so I can focus on the road. Lately I’ve missed his presence in the passenger seat. Today, though, I admit to myself that I am thankful for a little space to swallow the fact that the next time I’m in my hometown, my grandmother won’t be waiting for me.

“You okay?” My husband’s voice rolls over me like the wind, a breeze gently reminding me that I’m not alone in this moment.

“It doesn’t feel real.” It’s raining now and the sound of my windshield wipers feels louder than it is. My grandmother was ninety-one years old. It’s not as if this was a shock. Even so, her presence was so large in the lives of all who knew her that it is impossible to understand the weight of her absence.

“What would you tell her?” This time it’s not my husband’s voice I hear; he’s given up trying to talk over the sound of the rain beating against the windows. It’s my own voice in my head, already begging me not to forget her.

I signal for a lane change, grateful that the traffic is light as I navigate my way home. What would I tell her? What would be enough to make absolutely certain she knew the size of the hole she was leaving me with?

I’d tell her that the pound cake she taught me to make as a teenager was a lifesaver that kept my stomach filled as a snowed-in college student. That I can still smell the cornbread that was perpetually baking in a cast iron skillet in her apartment. I would tell her that every time I see a house with an arched brick entry, I feel a desperate longing in my bones for the house in Sandy Mush where she and my grandfather gave all my cousins and me our childhoods. That to this day, I will answer to a handful of names other than my own, because sometimes it would take her a minute to land on the right granddaughter. I’d also tell her that I never minded being mixed up with the older cousins because it made me feel grown up.

I’d tell her how much pride it gave me every time she beamed about her baby: my father, the youngest of her ten children. And that I secretly thought he was her favorite and by extension, maybe I was, too. My whole life she would introduce herself by saying she had ten kids, and every one of them were still living. I’d tell her that I wish she could see all ten of them lined up in birth order to tell her goodbye. She would have been so proud to see them all together like that in her honor.

I’d tell her that the childhood weekends and summer days spent with her and my grandfather would forever be my favorite memories. Barefoot, I would step carefully through their vegetable garden, gathering the ingredients for our next meal or for the afternoon’s plans for canning. She’d often have a friend come over and spend a whole day, and we’d sit out on the porch watching the cars go by as we snapped beans or shucked corn.

The sound of a car horn, muffled by the rain, reminds me of my reality. I glance at the rearview mirror and see my little family, my husband’s hand stretched over into the baby’s car seat. The two of them have fallen asleep holding hands.

I wish I could tell my grandmother that everything I knew about having a family, I learned from her. I’d tell her that watching her work with her hands my whole life - needling, cooking, cleaning - is why I think I can’t keep my hands still. I’d make sure she knew that I still remember how to make that pound cake. I can’t wait for my son to be old enough to try it. I hope that the love I put into cooking for my son will bring him the same comfort that my grandmother’s cooking did for me.

If I could, I’d hold her hands, covered in the rings that would dig into my skin when she squeezed, and I’d thank her for making sure I never stopped singing. I’d thank her for showing me how to coordinate the pedals on an old piano while moving my fingers across the ivory keys. I’d tell her that singing with her was one of the greatest privileges of my life.

I’d tell her about my son. How thankful I am that he got to meet her just a month before she closed her eyes for the last time. I’d tell her how sometimes he makes a face and looks at me in a way that tells me she’s in him. I would tell her I’m sorry for not calling more after he was born. I’d tell her that if I’m honest with myself, I’m more than a little angry that he wouldn’t get to know her. That he wouldn’t remember laying across her lap as she looked at him with pride or clutching her frail finger in his tiny hand.

“You can turn those off,” my husband tells me. His voice rings softly from behind me. I hadn’t noticed that the rain had stopped. I wonder if the windshield wipers woke him. It’s time to stop for a break and my body feels stiff. “What were you thinking about?” he asks me as I pull off on an exit.

Where would I even start? Rather than try to explain, I tell him, “Nothing, really. Just thinking about making a pound cake.”