Emerging Writers. A Memory by Ann V. Pogue

Jun 11

Jun 11 Emerging Writers. A Memory by Ann V. Pogue

The Smell of Love.

The smell of mint conjures memories of my grandmother. It is a flavor she taught me to love, a flavor she introduced to me in many forms – Lifesaver Crystomints, dark chocolate mint wafers, and home-brewed ice tea with fresh mint from the garden of the home we shared with her.

My grandmother had a black thumb, a legacy that skipped her daughter but lives on in me. With ignorance and earnestness, she killed every plant she tried to grow, but she couldn’t stop mint from thriving.

My father ceded one small section of the backyard to Grandmother’s mint. It grew with strong, thin stems and emerald green ridged leaves reminiscent of a skinny ace of clubs.

In the groomed cacophony of my father’s garden of colors and smells, Grandmother’s rangy mint could look like scraggly weeds someone forgot to pick, and its scent could be overwhelmed by the fragrant peonies and roses growing nearby. Its magic would only be revealed when Grandmother would harvest some and bring it to the kitchen.

That crisp, fresh scent filled the room as she washed and dried the leaves, picked them off their stems and placed them in the bottom of the curvy blue stoneware pitcher. She added hot, freshly brewed tea, muddled the leaves to release their fragrance and flavor, and left the tea in the refrigerator to cool.

I smelled the mint on her fingers as her hand waved the refrigerator door closed.

When the tea cooled, I loaded the bottom of a tall glass with sugar until Grandmother, who also had a sweet tooth and so sympathized with my sugar drive, made me stop at the fourth heaping spoonful. She poured tea in my glass and I stirred, allowing some sugar to melt into the liquid and some to stay saturated at the bottom of the glass. Then Grandmother added ice, being careful not to splash, and garnished my glass with a couple of small mint leaves. I inhaled the clean, refreshing smell. After we finished drinking the tea together, I used the teaspoon with the extra long handle to fish the yellow sugar out of the bottom of the glass and let it melt on my tongue.

Whenever I catch a whiff of fresh mint, I return to my childhood kitchen and my sweet tea times with Grandmother.

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Ann Pogue

Ann V. Pogue is currently enjoying (in the tortured sense) writing personal narratives and researching her family history. She is consistently inconsistent in both her meditation and Pilates practices, and also enjoys road cycling and traveling.

Ann served nine years on the Board of Planned Parenthood Hudson Peconic (PPHP), which provides health care, education and advocacy for women’s health and rights in the Westchester, Suffolk, Rockland and Putnam counties of New York. She was PPHP Board Chair for two years. Ann has served both nonprofit and for-profit organizations as a marketing consultant, including Nickelodeon, Prime Access Advertising and American Express. At J. Walter Thompson advertising agency, she created and implemented advertising strategies for her clients, and developed in-house recruiting and training initiatives. Ann has been a Trustee of the National Public Radio Foundation and of the United Nations International School. She received an A.B. degree in Economics and Communication from Stanford University and an M.B.A. from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.