The woman at the table
Gloria Whitfield
"I'm not a doctor, a lawyer, or a financial man. I'm a grandmother with a good memory and a kitchen table."
I'm seventy-five years old. What I know, I did not learn in a school. I learned it standing at my mother's elbow, and she learned it standing at hers — my grandmother Sudie, who fed nine people on about eight dollars a week and never once called it hard.
Three generations of women handed things down in that kitchen, and almost none of it was ever written on paper. That's the trouble with the way we passed things along. You learned it at somebody's elbow, and when the elbow was gone, so was the knowing.
So I've written it down. What a care home charges and how to stay out of one. The people who come around when they hear you've got a little put by, and how to spot them coming. And the food — every pot of it — before the last of us who cooked that way runs out of time.
I've no letters after my name and I don't pretend to. Where a thing needs a doctor or a lawyer, I say so plainly and send you to one. What I have is what I saw, what I was taught, and what I've checked twice before printing it.
— Gloria
