Mommy Sanders’ Sugar Cookies

My mother’s mother, Grandma Sanders was known in our home as Mommy. She lived in Glen Fork, West Virginia next door to the church where I began my relationship with Jesus when I was six years old. The thing I remember most about her house was the guitar that hung on the wall in the bedroom. As I would secretly and quietly strum the strings, I wondered how it was possible that those notes could ever make a song. But Mommy’s life was certainly one that brought melody to the many lives she touched.

As I recall, she couldn’t read and once, when I brought a canned soda from Uncle Tal’s store, she scolded me for bringing in a can of beer. “Pop”, until around that time, had only come in bottles and she didn’t know what was printed on the can. I was only in elementary school and assured her that it was a Pepsi Cola and Uncle Tal would never let me have beer. I actually doubt if he sold it anyway. Though she couldn’t read, she knew lots of Bible that she got by being in church every time the doors were opened. She even shouted in church every now and then.


Every year, it seemed, Mommy would decide to come to Bluefield with us “for a whole month.” But after a week, she was ready to go home. She had so many things to tend to back home and Aunt Ollie and the others in Glen Fork really couldn’t cover for her. (Surely it wasn’t because there were four noisy boys in the house at Bluefield.)

But while she was there, she always baked Sugar Cookies for us. Well, they were called Sugar Cookies, but they really weren’t that sweet. They tasted good, though, and no one else made them like her. She would put them in the pantry covered with a dish towel and we could slip in there and get them when we had what my Mother called “a sweet tooth.”

I don’t remember if Mommy was ever with us on Christmas itself, but I still remember Mommy Sander’s Sugar Cookies.