I knocked.
She opened the door within seconds. She looked older, her hair fully gray now, wearing that same faded wool sweater.
She looked at me. I was twenty pounds thinner, unshaven, with dark circles under my eyes. I braced myself for the lecture. I expected the “I told you so.” I deserved it.
She didn’t say a word. She just opened the screen door and pulled me into a hug that smelled like lavender and old paper.
“Come in, Jimmy. It’s cold out there.”
She sat me down at the kitchen table—the one with the wobbly leg—and heated up a can of tomato soup with a grilled cheese sandwich. It was the best meal I had eaten in a year.
While I ate, wiping tears from my eyes, she walked to the hall closet. She reached up to the top shelf and pulled down the blue tin.
You know the one. The Royal Dansk Butter Cookie tin. Every grandmother in America has one. Usually, you open it expecting cookies and find sewing needles, tangled thread, and loose buttons.
She placed the heavy tin on the table in front of me.
“Open it,” she whispered.
