Everytime I bite into a piece of my Grandmother Edith's banana bread, it brings back a flood of the most wonderful memories.  

My grandmother was the ringmaster of the world of imagination, which we entered with relief and giddy glee within a few minutes of our arrival. We would run to reconstruct the fairy houses, that had been destroyed by the forces of Mother Nature in our absence. We would explore in the backyard and dig to China with the energy of zealots. We would guard our frogs and toads, as if we were Lords of a kingdom.  I would love visiting her house in Lynnfield where we would climb the big apple tree in her backyard and explore her drawers which contained a curious collection of odds and ends; such as string, buttons, tin foil balls and the like. She always saved rags and thought twice before she threw anything away. My grandmother lived through the Great Depression and the World Wars, so thrift was a way of life. Nothing went to waste, not even those brown bananas!

When the bananas on her counter became dark and spotted, grandma would put them in the fridge. The blackened and mushy bananas would all but slither out of their skins.  The day before our arrival she would make her banana bread reminding us, "it's always better the next day." I looked forward for the times when we would make the bread together. I stirred the banana bread batter and would try to pick out the long banana strings from the inner peel but grandma assured me that it tasted better with the strings. Those were the days when you could lick the spoon and sit on the floor with the almost empty bowl and swipe your finger to collect the leftover batter before it was collected to soak in the sink.

So, when I make banana bread, I am really just a kid in my grandma's kitchen discovering the magic of the world again and marveling at the love, kindness and imagination in her legacy.