Platter at rest.

I didn't know my dad's mom. She died when I was 3.

She chain-smoked Camels, and after that cigarillos, and drank at taverns with her best friend Ruby Arrowwood, a Faulkner castaway if ever there was one.

She made her own head cheese, wore the kind of bumpy polyester that feels like Berber carpet, and painted the interior of the family farmhouse in shades best described as "Easter on Acid." She lived for Magnum, P.I. 

She ran a grocery store and carried a Saturday Night Special in the cashbox. The story goes that the pistol went off once and blew a hole in the floor of my granddad's car. After that, you could watch the pavement pass by as you drove.

She was a Catholic, and she didn't trust other Catholics not to take her dishware in the course of so many Sunday potlucks in the low-lit basement of the Sacred Heart, so she wrote ARTH in permanent marker on the back of every platter. This is one of them. 

Her name was Edith.