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“You must eat everything on your plate,” my grandma would say, shaking her finger, when we came to dinner. She was small, but fierce, and I knew to put only food I liked on my plate.
Swedish sausage? No. Pickled herring? No. Lutefisk? Double no.
But almost every other dish on her crowded dining room table was something a child would like...mashed potatoes, creamed corn, roast beef or turkey, little rolls, Swedish rice pudding – a side dish not a dessert, but made with plenty of sugar. (Grandma put “a leetle beeta” sugar in everything she could.)
After dinner, the grownups would tell stories of the journey to America; how my Aunt Elsie came down with the mumps and my grandmother worried immigration officials would turn her away from the ship; how, once they got to Minnesota, all the children were put into kindergarten – even my Aunt Ingrid at 11 – because they couldn’t speak English; how my dad had to wear a girl’s blouse to school because my grandmother used the wrong word to buy a shirt.
I remember the laughter as they told the stories, the pride in having survived the tough times, the quiet gratitude in being American. Later, I realized that there had not been enough food in those “tough times.” That the children had been hungry, that there had been no money for sugar. And I understood why Grandma loved to cook for us grandchildren, why she hated to see food wasted, and why she put “a leetle beeta” sugar in everything she made.
Grandma always asked one of the grandchildren to say grace – to “read,” she called it. We said, “Come, Lord Jesus, be our guest, and may these gifts to us be blessed.”
May we be thankful that we have full cupboards, and may we recognize hunger in our community and seek ways to feed those who are hungry. Amen.
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