Gigi Grandmother Quotes

Never trust anything you hear from an old Irishman,” my grandmother Gigi always said, and she should know because she’d married and buried three of them.

Lately, that bonding mostly consists of coming up with grandmother names that won’t make her sound old. Current leader: Gigi, because Mom refuses to consider my suggestion of Insta Gram.

I briefly considered getting a cat, but then decided against it because I didn’t want to be one of those people. You know what I mean. My grandmother, Gigi (Mom’s mom), was one of them. She’d make tuna fish and then sit in her old chair, which smelled like Bengay and broken dreams, and chew it, then open her mouth and let her cat eat it right then and there. She said it was because Mrs. Tingles was too old to chew her own food and she wanted to give her a treat. I told her I was the only person in the world who had a grandmother who made out with her cat and smelled like fish while doing so. My grandmother wondered aloud if that made her a lesbian.

The waiter chose this moment to stop at our table and babble on about the backstory of each dish and its ingredients. The carrots were cruelty-free, the bacon knew its grandmother, the chef had trekked all the way to the Malabar coast to handpick the peppercorns. It was a whole big thing.

Sadie had learned the rules of Revelare magic while growing up at her grandmother’s feet, her grubby little toddler hands searching for earthworms as Gigi explained why mustard seed helped people talk about their feelings and how star anise could bond two people together. The sweet tang of tangerine rinds scented the air as her little fingernails were perpetually stained orange. And always, Gigi warned her how their creations would speak to them. If you were in love, things tended to turn out too sweet. If dinner was bland, you needed some adventure. And if you burned a dessert—well, something wicked this way comes. Sadie listened to those lessons among the bitter rutabagas and wild, climbing sweet peas, drinking in every word, and letting them take root in her heart. She grew up comfortable with the knowledge that she was strange, weaving the magic around her like ribbons on a maypole.

I regret to inform you that your grandmother died in captivity; however, your brother is still safe.

Her maternal grandfather is South Indian, her grandmother is Scottish, her dad is an ethnically ambiguous Californian, and she has roots in all those places like I do.