My Grandma Stole Butter Dishes from an Italian Restaurant
I loved when she did this
Grandma used to steal butter dishes from the Italian restaurant in Laguna Hills, California.
I loved it when she did this. My younger sister and I would giggle. “Grandma!” But she’d slip the dishes into her purse after paying the bill, like a pro.
Grandma was a child of the Great Depression. She saved breadcrumbs from my plate and constantly froze small cartons of milk.
“Ma! Don’t feed the girls expired milk!” my dad used to say when we’d visit her and Grandpa in Laguna Hills during the summer.
“It’s fine!” Grandma always responded. “It was frozen.”
The stolen butter dishes were just another form of frozen milk to Grandma. It was something she could store for later. Because you never know.
Grandma had a thick New York accent and knew Yiddish.
She called it speaking Jewish.
Like Grandpa, Grandma was first-generation American. She was the daughter of Jewish Russian immigrants who came through Ellis Island after the Czar kicked them out of their shtetl, Fiddler-on-the-Roof style.
They moved to Laguna Hills, ten minutes from Laguna Beach, when I was twelve. Grandpa didn’t want to go, preferring his rent-controlled New York apartment for World War II veterans.
But when Aunt Ida — Grandma’s sister — called from Laguna and said the retirement townhome next door had opened, Grandma turned to Grandpa.
“I’m going to California, with or without you!” she said.
Grandpa, always the quiet and loyal family man, called and placed a cash offer on the home soon after. Thus, my yearly summer vacations to Laguna Beach began.
Grandma and Grandpa never updated the townhome after they bought it, leaving the seventies-styled yellowish brown shag carpeting. The heavy curtains matched the carpet, as did the wallpaper.
I didn’t care. This old home became them. Every summer, when I’d show up after the six-hour drive from Phoenix, Arizona, I curled my toes around the scruffy carpeting as Grandma prepped challah rolls with my sister to the backdrop of moist ocean air.
Of course, we always ate dinner one of those nights at the Italian restaurant around the corner, then headed out to Laguna Beach the next day.
It was Grandma’s leg that took away her independence.
Grandpa had died a few years ago, and her leg pain had become too much.
I was in my late twenties by the time we moved Grandma into Dad’s house in Phoenix, where she would continue to live. I knew this was Grandma’s goodbye to her California life.
It was a transition for me, too.
I’d spent two weeks in Laguna every summer for the past 15 years — sometimes with my best friend, sometimes with my family, sometimes with my boyfriend.
But always with Grandma.
During college, I’d moved eight times in four years. I’d suffered a harsh breakup that almost turned me against my Jewish heritage. I’d struggled through family conflict and finding my place in the world.
Yet Grandma’s home remained my constant, with its shag carpeting and untouched wallpaper. Perhaps the challah rolls eventually stopped, but dinners at the nearby Italian restaurant had continued; Grandma still snuck those butter dishes into her purse.
When she left California, Grandma refused to give up her Laguna home. Instead, she turned it into a vacation lodge for my sister and me.
“Bring back lemons from my tree,” she always said with a smile, before my boyfriend and I went on our yearly California vacation. “And take whatever you want from my house.”
The first year we visited Grandma’s place without her, I felt the emptiness. Like swimming in a deep pool you thought was shallow. I went through her cabinets and found several of her stolen butter dishes.
I looked over my shoulder and grinned at my boyfriend. “I’m going to take two of these,” I said.
Even though she was gone, the place still felt like Grandma and Grandpa. Their silverware was still there, and their clothes, their pictures.
Over time, it became our new normal.
Disneyland. Balboa Island. Dinners with family living in California. Cycling to Huntington. Eating at the French restaurant off Laguna Beach. The ocean mist. Lingering mornings with Starbucks cold brew.
It was a gift. I know that now.
I sat on Grandma’s bathroom floor, bawling.
The year was 2018 and I was thirty-six. I couldn’t believe Grandma was gone. It was a stroke.
My fingers gripped the shag carpeting. It sometimes smelled of mildew by then, until we aired out the place. I suppose several decades would do that to any carpeting along the California coast.
Our family was gathering in Laguna to bury Grandma with Grandpa under a shared gravestone, and I needed a moment alone in the bathroom.
That night, my dad, sister, and I decided to go out for dinner at the Italian eatery around the corner from Grandma’s place. The restaurant still looked and smelled the same, like bottomless garlic breadsticks and Italian dressing. We ate, talked, and reminisced. My dad hadn’t been to Laguna in ten years.
When the server brought the bill, I gave my dad and sister a mischievous glance.
“I think I’ll sneak these butter dishes into my to-go box,” I said.
My sister laughed, but my dad gave me a hard stare. “Shari,” he warned.
“In honor of Grandma!” I said, then started moving the dishes into my box, glancing around for security cameras. I’d nearly forgotten how times had changed since Grandma snuck them into her purse.
“If you do the crime,” my dad said, “better be ready to do the time.”
My eyes caught my dad’s, and he didn’t flinch. My stomach knotted. I slowly reached into my to-go box, pulled the butter dishes out, and placed them back on the table.
“Wise choice,” my dad said, right before cracking a smirk.
My dad and uncle sold Grandma’s place a few months after we buried her. I’d wanted to go back and say a final goodbye — to feel her presence one last time — but sickness prevented me from doing so. I was never able to return.
However, after her burial and before my illness, I was making myself food at my house one night. When I opened my cabinets, I found the two stolen butter dishes I’d taken from Grandma’s place all those years ago.
They were right between two stacks of bowls, nestled into the small crevice.
When I’d initially taken them, I’d known Grandma had more, but decided on only two. It was a fleeting choice in the moment.
But after saying goodbye to the only grandparents I’d known, my choice suddenly made sense:
One for Grandma. One for Grandpa.
May they live forever in the history of stolen butter dishes from the local Italian restaurant in Laguna Hills.
If you like my writing and want to show your support, “buy me a coffee” by dropping a few bucks as a tip on my Ko-Fi page. Just click the image below.
😃😃😃🤣🤣🤣🤣 What a Grandma!