Spirit of a Southern Belle, Part 1: The Prankster

Many of us have a special someone who touches our lives so deeply that when the time comes for him or her to leave, the world seems a whole lot emptier. 

That person for me is my grandmother. She died one month ago, but I feel her spirit very much alive inside of me today. We were close, Mawzy and me. My childhood is stocked full to the brim of fond memories with her and Paw, who was my best friend, until he passed away when I was 10.

Paw & Mawzy, Pre-Me

As a youngster I hung out at their house nearly every evening after school until my parents got home from work. I'd help Mawzy cook dinner, mostly I remember her spaghetti - she made her sauce from scratch. We ate grits for breakfast every morning if I stayed the night, and when I'd behave, and most times when I didn't, we got Mooky Mooky, which was Mawzy's fancy way of saying root beer float. She had a nickname for everything.

All southerners, especially those in Louisiana's deep south, know that most great memories involve great food. Mawzy loved going to "The Restaurant," a seafood place right down the street, where she'd always order the Crabmeat Pontchartrain, a rich, butter baked dish which definitely won't clog your arteries. And ordering a burger from Char Lou's was always a treat, particularly since it was the only place in town to get a burger. When I was about 7, Mawzy made a dessert that had cream cheese in it. Paw hated cream cheese. But he loved that dessert. So we had to keep it a secret - Ignorance is Bliss 101.

Mawzy had a tremendous amount of arm fat, more than the typical woman over 30. She called it her "fluff." All of us grandchildren were obsessed with touching it. It was soft, the word feathery comes to mind, and it jiggled, a solid form of entertainment in which she willingly obliged. For as long as I can remember her fridge held a magnet of a hippo in a tutu that read, "I'm not fat, I'm fluffy." Her fluff was a joke that never got old, though now that I have some fluff of my own, it's not nearly as funny. She was a good sport.

I credit Mawzy for my love of shenanigans. She was a top notch prankster. Their yard was home to the largest grasshoppers I've ever seen. Thick-shelled black things the size of (in my child's mind) lobsters. I was scared to death of them. She would lure me over under the pretense that she wanted to show me one of her flower gardens, and as soon as I'd get close enough, she'd whip one of those ghastly things from behind her back at which point I would run as fast and as far as possible, convinced she was on my heels. By the time I'd stop, my heart threatening to pound right out of my chest, I would hear her laughing. I'd peek around the corner of the house and find her still standing where I'd left her. The only critters that scared me as much as the grasshopper lobsters were the stick bugs who, according to her, spit out purple poison.

The stuff of nightmares.

Mawzy was clever, and as time went on, she stopped using bugs and figured out more creative ways to prank those of us closest to her.

To be continued...