The Last One, I Promise

The final prompt [for now] is from 2/16/06. We still met in the Border's store back then, kinda right out in the open and I remember starting to cry when I read this (you can read your piece if you want). The prompt was "Grandparents".
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My grandmother was a short (4'9") woman. My grandfather was probably 6'7" tall. We didn't see them much, because my father was in the Coast Guard and the coasts he guarded were far away from the red clay hills of Georgia.
The things I remember most about my grandmother are love and food, how they wrap around me like welcoming arms. Neither of them were demonstrative physically, but love was as present there as a handmade quilt. I loved them more than I knew at the time.

When I was three, she made my doll her very own tiny blackberry pie. (This chokes me up every time).
I remember walking out in my grandfather's truck garden in the early morning before it got too hot and together we would pick the best cantaloupe for the breakfast table.

I learned early that if I was quiet, I could sit on the porch with my mom and grandmother while they gossiped. There was work involved though, I was given my own bowl of peas to shell or beans to string. I had no idea who they were talking about, but it made me feel like I was part of the grownup club.

My grandmother's pantry was full of jewel toned jars of emerald green beans, ruby red tomatoes, golden pickled peaches, all the fruits of her hard labors. She cooked on a wood burning stove, indoor plumbing didn't come until the 1970's.

I didn't know until I was grown that they were "poor", tenant farmers, that they rented the house my father grew up in and sold moonshine to make ends meet.

All I knew is that some of the best days in my life were spent at their house. Sitting on the front porch swing under the tall Georgia pines watching the red dust swirl up after a passing pick up truck. Using a gourd dipper to drink some of the sweetest coldest well water in the world. Being the only one up with my grandmother before it was light watching her make biscuits.