Grandma and I are at the end of a long table full of relatives at a chain restaurant outside Beltway 8 in Houston. 

Gram is nervous because she doesn’t think she’s ever had Mexican food before, and she “doesn’t want anything spicy“. All the words on the restaurant menu look funny. I’m trying to talk her into a plate of chicken fajitas, but she doesn’t understand that it’s just grilled chicken. This woman who once served me soup that contained both leftover liver and peanuts is being a little bit whiny about her menu choices. It’s the first time in my life I’ve been on the teaching and comforting side of the relationship with Maude Schmid. 

This is 1995-96, so Gram’s about the age that my mom is now. I’m 25 and I’ve never met most of these people, or met them so long ago that they are strangers to me. But apparently I’ve had a second cousin living within 30 miles of me for a year and a half, and Gram and Gramp don’t go anywhere without deepening connections with relatives. She spent most of the day in the warp and weft of stories about somebody’s daughter-in-law‘s sister’s cousin’s dog’s illness without batting an eye, but this laminated menu is so strange for her it might as well be a copy of the Quran. 

Meanwhile 25-year-old me is at the age or five years younger is a child and five years older is middle-aged, and there’s no one at this table who’s within a decade of my age. I’ve spent the day nodding and smiling, foolishly trying to protect myself from, rather than marinating in, the sticky web of connection and love my family spins. Those few moments explaining Mexican food to a literal Connecticut Yankee come with a sense of power and competence that I will cling to as my first comfortable role of the day.

We’ve reached the boundary between comfort zone and comfort food. 

A crowded table that could, at any moment, come under assault from a mariachi band or horde of waiters singing “Happy Birthday” is not the place to bridge the 50 year gap between the two of us. Especially since one certain trait we share is poor hearing. That will come another night of their stay, in my apartment in the trees. At my small table next to the windows, looking out onto the porch with her husband’s telescope pointing at the sky, we’ll talk quietly. We’ll talk about teaching and distance from family and Westport, and about nothing at all, because it’s not the words that matter when you are looking in her eyes.