A Grandson Remembers Sally Schmitt
by Brooks Schmitt
In the orchestral movements of my life, my Grandma Sally was the oboe, the reedy and powerful note to which everyone around me tuned their instruments. Though proud, and almost unflappably sure of the right way of doing things, she was incredibly humble for such a public figure. It always surprised me growing up as I discovered the profound effect that she had on so many people’s lives outside of our family. Over the years I became increasingly aware of a larger family who had heard the song that my grandmother played and joined along in the chorus, composed their own variations and etudes, sonatas and symphonies.
Perhaps music isn’t the right metaphor to remember my grandmother, given that the Schmitt family is most profoundly not a musically gifted family. Though we all appreciate and love music, almost none of us can sing, and only one or two of us can even play an instrument. When I think of my Grandma Sally, perhaps rather obviously, I think of the wonderful smells that surrounded her. Vanilla bean pods snapping between her fingers, notes of star anise drifting from a boiling copper vat of apricot chutney, duck legs sizzling in the oven, toasted peppercorns cracking in a mortar and pestle, the smell of her lotion and her shampoo, and the faint aroma of jasmine around her neck.
These smells were so intoxicating that her kitchen was always a gravity well, and every day that she was in the kitchen there was this vague feeling that her kitchen was the center of the universe. It always felt strange to see my grandmother in the outside world, where she couldn’t control the balance of light, the temperature, the allocation of tasks. I would watch her eyes dart around and her mouth hang slightly open in the way that it always did when she was assessing a room and about to give orders, and then see her close her eyes and accept that this was not her domain. That even though she knew exactly where those chairs should go, and that the curtains blocking the morning light should be thrown open and were “just awful” as she would say, that this was not her world, her orchestra pit, her little gravity well in an unvarnished little pocket of Northern California.
And maybe that was why she spent so much time in her kitchens. In a world where women do most of the cooking but male chefs get most of the accolades, my grandmother steadily and assuredly transformed every kitchen she inhabited into a living breathing work of art. In her kitchen, I never once saw anyone tell my grandmother what to do. She was a beloved and trusted queen, a culinary Alexander the Great riding bareback at the front of her army, for there were always more worlds to conquer and more apples left to peel in her powerful fingers. Her opinions were unwavering, and everyone fell into line, and most of us have continued to do things the way she told us to for the rest of our lives because, usually, she was right. The world is more beautiful and more fragrant due to all of the wonderful every day tricks that she taught us and that all of us continue to do.
Over the course of my life, I watched my Grandmother slow down, and dismount from her horse. She did it gracefully, albeit reluctantly, and there were times when I would see her basking on her chair in the sun on her porch when I almost believed that leisure came naturally to her. But I knew that wasn’t the case. If her body had allowed it, my grandmother would have continued to cook and garden and reshape the world until long past each of her grandchildren had folded up their aprons and retired.
I see her now in the New York Times, and I can’t help but think of my Grandpa Don, a famously fastidious reader of newspapers, and how proud he was of her. I picture him in his chair, his glasses perched on the tip of his nose, smiling faintly as he reads the story of their lives printed in ink and sipping his morning coffee. My grandmother drops a large spoonful of duck fat into an iron pan and cooks their morning eggs, perfectly runny, and waits for him to finish the article to ask him what he thinks. And I know that they were so proud of each other, and that our entire family and extended family of friends, chefs, and guests at the table felt so proud to have had them in our lives, and I find myself so grateful for the life that Sally Schmitt lived.
Brooks Schmitt is a chef and culinary educator for the Center of Agroecology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He works with the university farm and Basic Needs program across multiple sites to advance campus food security and advocate for sustainable and culturally relevant farm to table foodways. Through fair wage job opportunities, hands on internships, and co-curricular partnerships, Brooks works with hundreds of university students every quarter to orient them to traditional cooking practices and issues facing our broader food systems.