ABSTRACT
My grandmother was a great quilter and cook. Until recently, I did not realize she was also my first mentor in understanding language development. If you haven’t tasted her whenever-you-crave-it creamed corn with oysters, or her holiday candy called “divinity,” or her bread, or feasted your eyes on one of her quilts that transform a thousand small pieces of ties and scarves and who-knows-what into a many-hymned chorus to the harmony of this world, then you have missed out on some wonderful and complex events. If Grandma Nelson had been an academic she could have given an entirely new connotation to “Divinity Studies,” for she was very wise and very articulate on the complex patterns in which humidity, temperature, bags of sugar, nuts, and other ingredients interacted to make some mixes optimal for divinity candy. May similar grannies nest in your extended family dwellings!
