I often get warned that a lot of the angst I experience is because I expect too much of people. There is a largely unspoken societal rule that says ‘Don’t expect a lot from others.’ I have seen blog posts dedicated to this exact topic. How much should we expect from friends? How much should you expect from wedding guests, or the guests from the couple? How much is it reasonable to expect grandparents to help with child care?

Everybody has a different agenda. Everybody has competing priorities. Everybody has a schedule that is packed to bursting. Most people want to help you, support you and meet your expectations (I am an optimist). But sometimes, often? it just isn’t possible. So we have learned to expect less. Certainly less that my grandmother could expect from her friends and neighbors when she was my age.

What really pisses me off is when people get upset when you do too much. They start talking about ‘your place’. They start listing off your other obligations. They get defensive. They get suspicious. They get upset.

It makes me wonder what happened to us as a society? What happened to paying it forward? Personal generosity? Helping a neighbour? We are all in for attending a concert for charity. Having money direct debited from our account each month to support the faceless needy. But cooking for the elderly, giving a struggling friend a much needed rest, actually showing up for each other when it counts, well, it seems we need some special permission for that.

I don’t know if it is compassion or pig-headedness, but I won’t be asking for special permission. I won’t be standing by when I could lend a hand, and I won’t be apologising for it either.

It’s my Nan’s birthday tomorrow. I won’t tell you how old she will be because she has Alzheimer’s and can’t remember herself. (And I think it would be rude to out her age here.) We can safely say she is pushing 90. Nanna, or Nanna Peg as my 2-year-old calls her, is responsible for my love of food and affinity with simple cooking & my love of reading.  (She is also quite possibly responsible for my addiction to pickled cucumbers – or else I might just be weird.)

One of the saddest things about her deteriorating memory is that the food she cooked every single day, from recipes she never ever wrote down, were the first causalities. The bonus of sitting on a high stool in her kitchen every chance I got as a child, watching her cook, stealing the ingredients, snacking with her whilst reading or watching the footy is that my taste-buds know her food inside and out.

There are details of my grandmother that are committed to memory that I will never forget (fingers crossed I missed the Alzheimer’s gene). She was the first with a hug, she ate and cooked humble, hardy food, her skin was always soft, she did her hair with rollers and tied it up in a scarf until it set, she had a shoe collection to rival Carrie Bradshaw’s, she always set the table, she ate granny smith apples with salt, her meat pie and her bacon bone soup were to die for. Above all else she dedicated her whole life to nurturing and loving.

I used to think her path as a carer and home maker was old-fashioned and lacking in value. Oh how naive I was. The unfaltering dedication she showed caring for a procession of family  was saintly: from her husband to her children, her ailing parents to her grandchildren without so much as a sabbatical between them (us). She even opened her door to countless ‘strays’ over the years as well. The risk of your legacy in life being only love is that you can only hope those you touch keep your love alive.

In my effort to keep Peggy’s love alive I am taking a leaf from her book.  Last night that leaf was bacon bone soup. If my husband’s face was anything to go by – he felt just as loved as I used to as a child.