Joyce's Journal

Grandma Fisher chewed the most delicious gum ever invented — that marvelously sweet and delicious smelling stuff called Juicy Fruit. It tingled my young nose and pleased my palate. My earliest memories involve Grandma and Juicy Fruit gum and church. I must have been age 4 or 5 – a wiggly red haired child, and I liked to sit with Grandma. She tolerated my wiggles more than Mom did although there was a limit to the speed and force of leg swinging that even she would tolerate. Grandma smelled like baked biscuits and Juicy Fruit. She chewed only half a piece at a time – Grandma still carried scars from The Great Depression when she couldn’t afford the luxury of chewing gum – and that half piece must have lasted her days. But the most savored image of Grandma’s gum is the sight and smell of her getting a piece from her pocketbook – her purse – during church. She whispered to me as she tore the gum in half and pulled off the wrappings, “You be a good girl, now. Sit quiet with me.” I knew to chew with my mouth closed and yes, I sat still. If I’d wiggled Grandma wouldn’t give me a piece of gum during the next service. Savoring that gum carried this child through the tedium of the sermon – that 30 minute interval of time when the preacher spoke mysterious words to the adults and we kids had to forebear. The adults understood, “Be still and know that I am God.” I knew to be still, and Grandma would tend to me.