Many of us called her “G.G” – short for Great Grandmother. She was also known as Bonnie and to a few, Mother. She was my “mom’s mother’s Mom” if such a phrase makes sense. It’s the only way I can say it without the lineage becoming too fuzzy or dropping names that you probably already know.

G.G was a character in a world that seemed to be moving too fast. Walking into her home that had seen many transformations was always an event. In the colder seasons, it smelled of gas burning heaters and maybe a little something sweet. In the warmer parts of the year, it was the window unit that sat directly behind her kitchen table that pumped furiously cold air.

There always seemed to be (in my memory) a rolled down paper bag filled mostly of pecans and other various hard shelled snacks. The coffee pot was always hot and filled with the stuff that accompanies much conversation and friendship. Because you see…G.G had lots of visitors.

She owned a small trailer park behind her home that hugged a gas station and a main highway that led to the Gulf Coast. Driving by on the way to our favorite catfish house we’d say, “There’s G.G’s house!”

“Mother”, as my Gran and Great Aunts call her, was a storyteller. There was the one about the ghost that threw a flashlight at her from atop the refrigerator or the fact that she’d see people walking around her home and sitting in her furniture. It didn’t scare me much only because G.G felt pretty calm about it all. It never seemed to bother her that these things happened in her home.

My favorite is the one about the roach that would come out and watch TV with her. She would say the roach came out when she turned the TV on. It would prop itself against the chair as though it were lounging about. It was to be…an unexpected, but welcome friend in the house of Mrs. Bonnie Tate.

This is the same woman that had an out-of-body experience and swears she saw in real life, a UFO.

G.G would take my sister and me out to Ward’s every now and again for an “after-school snack” that consisted of those saliva-inducing Big One’s – which to you non-Southerners is a cheeseburger with chopped onions and chili. Oh and of course with French fries and a shake. What is a snack without your protein, veggies and dairy?

On cold days, my sister and I would huddle underneath a blanket in front of her tiny heater and watch Saved By the Bell, USA High and umm…oh yes, Barney. Why we watched Barney…I can’t remember nor does it matter. We were youngin’s and it was our comfort.

I miss her.

When I think about myself as an adult, I come to realize the things she taught us in her wisdom. Many things, I cannot remember. But her character and hospitality rubbed off on me and with no doubt, most of the people she knew and cared for.

We are all, in one way or another, a product of people like her:

a storyteller, a mother and a G.G.