Tag Archives: grandmother

Elders Eat First

Nationality: Indian
Age: 70
Residence: India
Performance Date: 3/23/2021
Primary Language: Hindi (urdu)

Context and Background:

Food is a big part of Indian culture and here, my informant is almost like my grandmother and my late grandfather’s family friend. She tells me a belief about food in India. 

Performance: (via phone call)

There is a belief that whenever we are making food for the family, the first bite is always eaten by the elder of the family. Elder meaning, the oldest child of the family. In a family of mom, dad, and two children, this means, either the elder child can eat it because they are the oldest sibling, or the mom and dad can eat if they were the older sibling in their family. It excludes the younger sibling for eating the first bite. The reason behind this is because we believe that if the elder eats the first bite, there will be plenty of food for the entire family. But if the younger child eats first, there will be a shortage of food. 

Analysis:

After recording this conversation, my and my friend also had a conversation about her childhood. She told me she had 11 siblings and most families in her village were quite big. At the time she was born, in the 1950s, it was common to have a lot of children because there weren’t many birth control options. These villages could also be poor, so food on the table was something they had to worry about. This folk belief is a natural consequence of their circumstances, they had to make sure there was enough food on the table for everyone. If believing that the older child ate first gave them some peace of heart and so they adopted and spread this folk belief. Even in the 2020’s, my mom always makes me eat first bite because of this belief. 

The Ghost of Her Grandmother at Death

Nationality: USA
Age: 18
Occupation: Student
Residence: Seattle
Performance Date: October 26, 2020
Primary Language: English

Main Transcription:

Collector: Hello JS, so I know that you have mentioned before that there are ghost stories and interactions in your family. I would really appreciate it if maybe you could share some of your experiences.

Informant: Okay so when I was little my family had like a lot of encounters with ghosts and spirits; it’s happened for me a lot. I will share a story that happened with my mom and myself. I think it’s like the craziest experience. So when I was little I was looking out our window just like looking outside like anyone would do, I was maybe 10 and I saw this person walking down the street and we lived in a pretty small neighborhood so everybody pretty much knew everyone.  I saw this person walking down the street and I’d never seen them before, so I called to my mom who was in the kitchen and said, “Mom, who’s the pretty girl walking down the street?” My mom was doing something and could not see out the window, so I yelled to her explaining what she looks like. I said “she’s in this red dress with flowers on it, she had long brown hair and she’s really pretty.” At that moment my mom walked over and looked out the window and was like “Oh my God that’s exactly what my mom, your grandma, wore when she died”.  I supposedly had seen my grandma that I’ve never met before in the clothes that she died in.  I find this really creepy and my mom tells that story all the time that it looked like real life and we thought it’s a real life person that we could touch, but no one else in our family had had any other encounters with our grandmother.

Collector: Do you think are any reasons in particular why your Grandmother showed herself to you and your mother?

Informant: Well I think that my mom and my Grandma are really similar and my mom talks about my Grandma as like she is her Guardian Angel. My mom attributes small occurrences to her mom.  Little super random stuff like if something like drops in our house or sometimes like come up in her dream. My mom can connect those things, but my mom also sees auras around people.  The auras are the colors that you associate with people and it allows my mom the extraordinary power to know how someone is feeling or if something’s wrong.

Collector: Does she think this ability comes from her grandma? 

Informant: No, I think she thinks that she has like this connection with her, but I don’t think she got it from her.

Collector: Have there been other times where you have experienced other sorts of supernatural events?

Yeah, my sister and I often have the same dream and wake up seeing figures of old people standing in the corner. This makes me sound actually insane, but more often than not, my sister sees the person and I could like feel the spirit. I think it’s crazy and not a coincidence that both encounter similar things at the same time. Okay, that sums up most of it.

Collector: Would you be willing to share any more of your experiences?

Informant: Ummm, for the most part I have told you the interesting parts.

Collector: Well, thank you so much more sharing and I really appreciate you taking the time to tell your story.

Context and Relation:

JS grew up in a small town outside of Chicago. She later moved to Seattle for high school. There are pieces of her story that are from her time in Seattle, but the first encounter about seeing her grandmother took place in a small suburb outside of Chicago. She remembers this story because of the abnormality of the situation. It was extremely strange for JS to see an accurate image of someone that she had never met before. JS is a caucasian teenage girl who is attending an American university.

Personal Reflection:

Personally, I have never had an experience quite like JS’s with seeing a dead grandparent or parent or experiencing a spirit. I found it interesting in JS’s story that her Grandmother was wearing the clothes that she died in and that the grandmother took the body of a younger girl, similar to her age. I don’t know exactly what this detail means, but it is definitely worth mentioning. I agree with JS that these events are scary, but I find it really interesting how nobody else in her family has connected with her Grandmother except JS and her mother. Personally, it would make sense to me if other family members came in contact with the Grandmother ghost being from the same family, especially if her sister has had visions of figures from dreams. In conclusion, JS had an amazing encounter with a ghost of her grandmother that she will never forget. 

“Well, then it must have been a lie.”

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Nationality: American
Age: 76
Residence: FL
Performance Date: April 10
Primary Language: English
Language: Yiddish

Informant is grandmother, currently living in Florida having lived most of her life in New Jersey. I have never heard this saying before nor has anybody I’ve asked.

This saying always comes after somebody has just forgotten what they were going to say— lost train of thought. Reenacted by her and her granddaughter, this is how it goes:

 

Granddaughter: “Hey Bubbe, guess what?”

Bubbe: “What?”

Granddaughter: “Actually, I forget.”

Bubbe: “Well then it must have been a lie!”

 

You’re supposed to say that anytime somebody forgets their train of thought. It’s a pretty cute thought and people in the room laughed when they heard it. I think it also highlights one of my grandmother’s core values which is honesty. The joke is funny because it discounts whatever one was trying to say, but forgot.

“Doesn’t matter, it must have been a lie! You’d remember it if it were true” Bubbe tells me.

Cooking with High Emotion

Nationality: USA
Age: 20
Occupation: Student
Residence: Los Angeles, CA
Performance Date: 4/08/16
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

Folklore Piece:

“Well, my grandmother always used to tell me that when you cooked, your emotions would like seep? I don’t know if that’s the right word. Seep into the food and affect the taste. Um, she would say you should never cook, especially for other people, when you are angry or sad or the food will come out wrong or, like, taste bitter. And this goes double for baking, um because baked goods should be made with love so that they’re sweeter. Basically, like, basically you should always cook in a happy environment where you’re relaxed, with music, your favorite show, or, like my grandmother’s favorite, a glass of red wine.”

 

Background information:

Asked for more information online at a later time, and this was her response

“My grandmother is the cook in our family and we’ve done a lot of baking and cooking together, both for family holidays and for daily meals while she taught me how to cook. Cooking and baking with my grandmother was a great way for us to bond and we made many great memories. She taught me everything I know about cooking. This was a good reminder of not only taking care of myself and my emotional/mental health but also of caring for my loved ones. Food is sustenance in the same way love is; family and friends need both food and love to thrive. It’s a pretty traditional idea as well, grounded in the idea that women are the main caregivers and the source of a family’s happiness and well-being. I’m not sure where my grandmother heard it from, but I take it very seriously and it helps me feel connected to both my ancestors and the loved ones I’m cooking for. “

 

Context

I knew the informant had liked to cook and bake, so I asked if she had any good advice she had learned from her grandmother, who, based on previous collections I had taken from her, I knew was quite the character. She told me this story, and also said that it would “definitely be something she would teach kids whenever they’re learning how to cook”.

 

Analysis

Cooking and its various associated folklores are important identifiers for many ethnic groups and families. Recipes, traditions, and the act of cooking itself are taught traditionally between family members and those belonging to the same cultural group. Particularly interesting in this piece is the dynamic between the food and the cook; tangibly, the ingredients in a recipe are what makes the food taste the way it is. The preparation has an effect, too, but if you prepare food the same way, with the same ingredients, you should get the same result. That the participants grandmother suggested that the cook’s emotions and feelings can be used as an ingredient is a way to personify the food to be an extension of the self.

In the same way that one would not want to make a family member sad, angry, or distressed, the cook would not want to give food that would have that emotion cooked into it. This was perhaps introduced so that the cook – often put in stressful situations – can remember to keep calm. Especially as a child learning recipes and how to cook, it’s important that they not become frustrating and instead are taught that cooking can be the cultural instrument it is often used as.

Good Luck Candles

Nationality: Mexican
Age: 23
Occupation: Student/Library Worker
Residence: Echo Park, California
Performance Date: April 24, 2014
Primary Language: English
Language: Spanish

The informant is a 23-year-old undergraduate at the University of Southern California. She moved a lot when she was younger, but spent her high school years but spent her high school years in Colorado, and still returns there to visit her dad on occasion. Her family is Mexican (though only partially) and Catholic, but her grandmother is Spanish (though her family has been in America for several centuries) and is a lot more Catholic than the rest of her family. I asked the informant about anything related to luck and she told me about the closet of candles her grandmother has.

Her grandmother has a closet full of the “Mexican candles” that are unscented candles in tall glass jars that usually have some sort of religious figure, like Jesus or a saint, printed on the outside. (These are also called “novena candles”). The informant says that she cannot remember a time where her grandmother did not have these candles. Her grandmother would keep at least one lit at all times, even when the grandmother is out of the house and, as the informant put it, “created a fire hazard.” Though the informant and other members of her generation (siblings, cousins, etc.) would tease the grandmother for being so obsessive over these candles, they would help her make sure that one was lit when they were around her house. Her grandmother believes that if she keeps these candles lit, it signals God to watch over her family.
There was one instance where the informant and her cousins decided to blow the candle out as a joke. Her grandmother did not find this entertaining, and was very upset that the candle that she thought was connected to God had been blown out, meaning God was no longer looking over her family. Shortly after the candle was blown out, the informant’s grandfather called  and explained that on their way to Idaho, their car had almost flipped and crashed, which had been, unbeknownst to him, the time period that the candle had been blown out. This reinforced the grandmother’s belief that the candles actually did something, and the children were discouraged from blowing out the candles ever again.

The candles physically symbolize the connection to God that is sometimes not easily felt. By using the flame of a candle to signify this connection, a simple glance at the candle can reaffirm the connection if the feeling itself is not there. This can also show the connection to others without having to actively discuss it.