I'll never forget you…Grandma Honeybunch

EVERY WEDNESDAY WHEN I WAS 16, I’d change into a nice button-down and my best jeans after school. Then I’d ride my bike on the path between our house and my grandmother’s outside Meadville, Pennsylvania. Exactly at four, Grandma Honeybunch— we always called her that, though I don’t know why except that it fit her sweetness—would pull her dark green Dodge Stratus sedan into the dirt driveway.

KYLE BROWN, Columbus, Ohio

“Hi, Kyle!” she would call out, trying to hide how worn out she was from a long day on her feet at the chair factory. “It’s our date night! Give me a few minutes to get ready.” I waited in her living room, fiddling with the Nintendo console I knew she practiced on so she could beat me. Grandma Honeybunch loved her bragging rights! Out she’d come in a flowered print dress, her short, curly gray hair freshly brushed, wafting in a cloud of the perfume she wore just for the occasion. “Where’s my purse?” she’d ask, absentminded as usual, and I’d retrieve it from under the table or between the couch cushions.

Then we were off, with me behind the wheel of the Dodge so I could log 100 adult-supervised hours for my license. Our biggest adventure had been when I drove us to St. Louis for a family reunion, windows down, the wind blowing through our hair, as Grandma Honeybunch tried to navigate, something she wasn’t too good at. Most Wednesdays we headed to Taco Bell or KFC in Meadville, me tootling along well under the speed limit. Sometimes we’d splurge and dine at Cracker Barrel in Union City.