This essay is a bit different from the reflections / exhortations I usually write. But a few months ago, I wrapped prosciutto around cantaloupe for a brunch and suddenly I was back at my maternal grandmother’s dining table, tucking into a bowl of grits, with a side of toast and cantaloupe. Within a week, I’d begun teasing out an essay that pulled the thread of hospitality through the ways I experienced love from Gramma. It will probably be more meaningful to those who knew her, but I hope it is a sweet read for you – and perhaps sparks inspiration for ways you, too, might form your own life into one of welcome.
My maternal grandmother was the smallest woman I knew.
Petite and energetic, she would hug us vigorously, smacking right around our kidneys and squishing us close, as we would squeeze through her retractable screen door and pad across plush nineties carpet into her home.
She lived in a tidy little villa in southwest Florida, with palms and modest hedges. There was a smallish living room, a dining table nook by the kitchen, and a “tv room” behind folding closet doors in the back. Two boxy bedrooms down a narrow hallway and a tiny back patio with jalousie windows finished off the condo.
It was always a little too warm in there. Small grandmothers run cold, you see. On summer nights, she would run an oscillating fan for me, which would breeze over sunburnt shoulders as I stretched out under pale peach sheets. She had a way of saying my name that drawled and if I am very quiet and very focused, I can hear it again.
My grandmother took many brisk walks.
Though she graciously strolled along with me when we would walk the beaches, she got the real work done on her morning constitutional. She would loop her neighborhood at dawn, greeting everyone cheerfully and returning home to get the percolator going for coffee and boil water for grits. She poured those grits into small ceramic bowls to salt and butter them, before serving up breakfast with orange juice (lots of pulp, please), wheat toast, and a bowl of slick cantaloupe slices.
My grandmother welcomed people.
She took a small space and filled it to the brim with her children and grandchildren, stocking Yoo-hoo drinks and snacks we loved. She toted us to the island, to the library, to church, and to the pool. When we were older teens, driving for weekend visits and bringing friends along for the beach, well, she just folded them right in with the kidney-whacking hugs and morning coffee service.
My grandmother wrote us “love you” notes and thank you notes and holiday notes, her broad, loopy script itself a sort of welcome. She listened well and offered a second cup of coffee. She took you along with her — to deliver muffins to her lifelong bestie Gloria, to visit at the church, to run an errand, to watch the sun set over the gulf.
She did not have a spacious living arrangement or many seating options or modern + elegant household adornments. She set her quilted placemats out, piled platters and bowls onto a plain dining table, and flitted from guest to guest, filling cups and bringing extra napkins. She did not do fancy, but she did do home-y.
It was these patterns of hospitality that turned common habits, cantaloupe at breakfast, and a smallish condo into havens of rest and warmth.
My grandmother, Eloise, held us all, in her own way — and in this, she was not a small woman. She was generous and expansive. She was more interested in you than in herself.
And that, I think, is the way of welcome.
Hospitality isn’t about a glamorous home, it’s a heart posture that says to others I am glad to be with you. You are welcome here — on my couch or at the coffee shop table or on our walk in this park.
I’d love to know your favorite ways of welcome — how you make space in your life or home for people to experience hospitality and love. One of my personal habits any time we have people in our home for a meal is to be sure there is a way for someone to help. It can be awkward to show up somewhere new and just sit there while the host does everything. Having a small task (setting the table, chopping a veggie for the salad, pouring the drinks) is a way we invite people into dinner together as a shared experience.
What are your best practices for welcoming others?
Thanks for reading, friends.
