preview

Pantry Research Paper

Decent Essays

I search the pantry shelves for flour as my mother, Diana, flips through the notebook full of family recipes. It is a three-day weekend and we are spending the day off together. She finds the recipe for ginger cookies, or as we call them, Nannie cookies, named for my great-grandmother, a truly gifted cook. As we get the ingredients from the pantry, she begins to tell me stories about my great-grandmother Freda, who emigrated from Canada at (?) years old in 192(?) and worked as housekeeper to afford clothes and books for high school. My mother remembers that as an adult, Freda dragged herself around with crutches for a decade before she could get hip replacements in 197(?). Most in her position would have been bedridden. In later life, Freda …show more content…

I disagree. She is as resilient as any of the others, I tell her, the child of an absentee father, a survivor of cancer, and a mother to three special-needs children, a deaf daughter and two behaviorally-challenged(?) sons. She is incredibly determined. As I write this essay, she is on one of her annual Grand Canyon hikes. A few years ago, she hiked from rim to rim to rim within one day–a fifty mile trek. She unfortunately got sick, but persisted despite the circumstances and finished the hike with hours to spare.

For me, Etta models the importance of hard work, Freda a refusal to complain despite hardships, Roberta a commitment to self-improvement, and Diana the power of determination. I recognize that each woman in my family has her own story, and I admire their character. Their traits have been entrusted to me, and so I hope to honor the women in my family by trying to live by that ethic

Get Access