How Granny Cabbage got her name

and other tales from a small village in Portugal

I didn’t know her name for many months after I moved into the village.

The Brits living next door to me didn’t either. So they’d made one up. They called her “Granny Cabbage” for the gifts of produce this sweet old woman often left at their gate.

Six months after I moved in, the Brits moved to a house in another village.

By then, Granny Cabbage had begun making her way slowly down my lane every so often, holding onto the wall with one hand and supporting her bad leg on the other side with a cane, bringing me the occasional gift of freshly pulled turnip greens, beans or lettuce. She would pat Kiitos on the head, mumble some words in Portuguese to him, assure him how handsome he was, wave at me, then slowly make her way back up the lane to her own home.

I loved these gifts of fresh produce and wanted to repay her in some way. So I baked lemon chocolate chip cookies for her (I have an abundant lemon tree, so many of my recipes now have lemons in them.)

My plan was to hang a bag of them on her gate. I wanted her to know they came from me, but how to address the card? I couldn’t call her Granny Cabbage!

So I asked another neighbor, the Portuguese man who lives around the corner from me and across the road from her, what her actual name was.

“Ermina,” he said. “You can call her Tia Ermina.” Aunt Ermina. So that’s what I wrote on the cards I attached to my baked goods.

Which must have confused her terribly because it wasn’t her name.

It’s possible I misheard him.

Weeks went by before I thought to ask another Portuguese neighbor. He told me her name was Gracinda, not Ermina. Thinking of her as a Portuguese version of Glinda, the good witch in the Wizard of Oz, made me happy. ☺️

I corrected her name on the next card I left at her gate with some lemon poppy seed muffins.

In my heart, though, she will always be “Granny Cabbage.”

Somehow it just suits her.

© original art by Kristin Fellows