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I met my grandmother again when she was eighty-eight.Nineteen years had passed since I last stood in her presence, and time had touched her gently but unmistakably. Much had changed. Her body, slower. Her voice, softer. But one thing remained exactly the same.
Every morning, she rose early.
She gathered her basket of ingredients, her old-school radio, her sudoku book, and carried them to her station; set up in her outdoor kitchen like a quiet altar. I watched her move with the confidence of muscle memory, the kind that doesn’t need instruction.
She tuned the radio until the air filled with music that sounded like a 1970s nightclub in Togo.
It made me pause.
It made me wonder who she had been before motherhood, before duty. What kind of young woman she was when her body was light and the nights were long. My mother later told me she loved to dance. I smiled, imagining us together on a crowded floor, laughing, sweating, alive in the same rhythm.
In a bowl of water beside her sat one of my favorite ingredients: okra.
I already knew.
She was making Fetri, as we say in Mina or Gombo in French.
My favorite dish.
She didn’t use a cutting board. She held the okra in her hand, the knife moving toward her body, the opposite of what you’re taught in a professional kitchen.
No fear. No hesitation.
Her hands knew what to do.
They always had.
I remembered her cooking it when I spent school breaks and summers with her, back when time felt endless and belonging seemed simple. The recognition caught in my throat. Adoption has a way of taking so much from you. Whole chapters, whole intimacies, without asking. I felt the grief rise, sharp and familiar.
But I grounded myself in gratitude.
She was here.
Alive.
Breathing.
Standing in front of me, feeding me the way she always had.
See, I believe grandmothers are the secret ingredient to raising children. They carry a wisdom that doesn’t announce itself. A tenderness that skips a generation.
That day reminded me that some knowledge is never written down.
It lives in the hands.
This dinner grows out of that truth.
Out of the hands that fed us.
Out of the memories that stayed, even when so much else was taken.
It is my way of honoring her.
And an invitation to honor yours.
Please Note: Tickets are non-refundable but may be exchanged. This event will be filmed and/or photographed. By purchasing a ticket and attending, you consent to being filmed or photographed and grant the event organizers full rights to use the resulting images and video for promotional and archival purposes.
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Downtown Raleigh, North Carolina, Raleigh, North Carolina, United States
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