A Few Words About a Special Lady
Remembering my Grandma, Joyce.
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Watergate salad, also referred to as Pistachio Delight, or colloquially as Green Goop, Green Goddess salad, Green Fluff or Green Stuff, is a side dish salad or dessert salad made from pistachio pudding, canned pineapple, whipped topping, crushed pecans, and marshmallows.
To those with an unrefined palate, this concoction might sound revolting. However, if you know, you know. Watergate salad is a midwestern culinary masterpiece. The perfect combination of sweet, nutty, crunchy, squishy.
There were countless reasons to look forward to visiting my grandma, Joyce. But one of my most fond memories was that she always made sure to make Watergate salad when I came to visit. Of course, I happen to think the green stuff is delicious — but that’s not the only reason I was excited to see it in the refrigerator.
The idea that she went out of her way to make this year after year with me in mind meant a lot to me. I always felt special at the thought that she had made it especially for me — even if really it wasn’t just for me.
On top of that, I always had a great laugh when she asked me to get the “green shit” out of the refrigerator. I’d open the refrigerator door to find an extremely fancy Waterford Crystal style bowl filled with the green fluffy stuff topped with saran wrap. To me, the contrast of the humble salad in the opulent bowl always stood out like a sore thumb among the other dishes.
Joyce was many different things to many different people — mother, sister, friend, grandmother, great grandmother, and more. To me, she was Grandma. She gave great hugs. She always had long painted nails. The last time I saw grandma, her nails were painted a beautiful lavender color.
Grandma was a kind and caring woman. She was generous and seemed happiest to have a full house of family. She loved her house and ‘the land’. It was the family hub where her family could be together and she always hosted holidays. She decorated her hallway with a gallery of countless school pictures of her grandkids and great grandkids through the years.
Now, my grandma wasn’t an angelic, demure, ‘grandma type’. She was a strong, funny lady. She was tough, suffered no fools. She said what was on her mind with a cool, quick wit. She would whoop your ass in a game of cards and could talk trash to boot.
Over the years I’ve seen her in the woman I’ve become. I often dream of owning a house with some land where we can stretch out and have a garden. My husband lovingly calls my alter ego Loyce (Lea, my mom + Joyce) when I get feisty. When playing rummy, it’s important to ‘pull a Joyce’ and hold on to a lot of cards, then lay them all down at once, crushing your opponents confidence in one swoop.
I will miss her dearly. It feels a little cliché but I do believe she’s in a better place. In my imagination, her “better place” is being reunited with grandpa, out at the land with the dogs, tending to her flowers and watching the birds, playing cards with those she loved and having a wine spritzer.
Growing up, my sister and I referred to Joyce and Norm as “Grandma and Grandpa Far- Away” in order to differentiate from my grandparents on my dad’s side. Even though she and I always lived at least 1-2 hours away from each other, she never felt far away. She was and will stay close to my heart.
After the struggles of the last year or so, it’s even harder to lose someone so special and to try to be positive about it. But, I want to acknowledge grandma’s full, wonderful life and everything she meant to me and everyone who loved her. It is only fitting that we should celebrate all the ways she touched our lives and acknowledge how lucky we were to have had her in our lives.
No one’s lost who is not forgotten. Thank you, grandma.
