Memories of Grandparents in the Lowcountry: A Tribute to Midnight and Marie

Some people leave a mark so deep it never fades. This is my love letter to Midnight and Marie.

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Fair warning: this post might make you cry. It makes me cry just to write it. When I think about memories of grandparents in the Lowcountry, two faces come immediately to mind — “Midnight” and Marie (pronounced maw-ree), my grandparents, two of the greatest, most colorful, most genuinely cool human beings who ever lived. Even though their time on this earth felt far too short, their spirit is permanently woven into everything I am. My memories of grandparents in the Lowcountry are some of the most treasured things I carry.

Originally wrote May 24, 2012

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Lowcountry Grandparent Memories: Living With Midnight and Marie

My sister Michele and I lived with them for a stretch when we were very young, and I remember it being pure joy. Now that I have kids of my own, I understand with complete clarity how exhausted two people caring for small children must have been — but they never once showed it. Not for a single second.

Grandma kept her rhythm without missing a beat: a lot of gloriously unhealthy Lowcountry cooking and then bingo, bingo, bingo. Grandpa — Midnight — had his own equally perfect routine: a full day at Westvaco, coming home with his change for our bear bank, cracking open a cold beer, and heading straight down to the dock to fish, crab, or catch whatever the creek offered that evening. Life should only be so pure and simple.

Those memories of grandparents in the Lowcountry — the dock, the creek, the smell of pluff mud, the sound of the water — are as vivid today as they were then.

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Marie: The Bingo Queen Who Gave Me My Fire

I loved my grandma with everything I had, and I am completely convinced she is responsible for my free spirit, my deep compassion, and my fiercely competitive streak. In the bingo hall, she was an absolute force. Her goal was to win — and to win big — and we all benefited enormously from her victories. Every toy I owned, every piece of fake jewelry in my collection, basically every treasured possession of my childhood came directly from bingo winnings. When she passed and we went through her things — including the lamps made out of Barbie dolls — every single item prompted the same reaction: yep, that’s a bingo treasure.

Her cooking is a whole separate legacy. Paula Deen had absolutely nothing on Marie. A stick of butter and a tub of Crisco were non-negotiable starting points for virtually every dish, and she fried everything. I’m fairly certain she once fried something that was already fried.

She taught me to cook, which is how my very first show-and-tell recipe came to be a genuine family classic:

Step 1: Head through the backwoods to the Red and White. Step 2: Go to Aisle 10, frozen foods. Grab a pizza. Step 3: Preheat the oven to 375. Cook for 25 minutes. Ta-dah.

I turned that in completely seriously. I regret nothing.

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Midnight: My Lowcountry Grandfather Who Taught Me the Creek

Grandpa — Midnight — was the other end of the spectrum entirely, and my memories of grandparents in the Lowcountry are incomplete without him at the center of all of it. He taught me to curse, to appreciate a cold beer, and to love the Lowcountry waterways with everything I had. (I got rid of two of those habits quickly. The third one, the potty mouth — that one I’m keeping, and I blame him entirely.)

He took us fishing, shrimping, and crabbing on Hamlin Creek before any of it was fashionable. He loved that dock the way some people love a cathedral, and I spent hours and hours beside him on it, learning without realizing I was learning — about patience, about the water, about being still in a place that is genuinely beautiful.

His influence is why I love pluff mud, why I love the creek, and why getting out on the water still feels like coming home.

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The Small Perfect Moments That Make Up My Memories of Grandparents

Some of the most precious memories of grandparents in the Lowcountry aren’t the big ones — they’re the small, specific, completely irreplaceable ones:

Spinning in their yellow polyester chair for hours, treating it like the wheel on The Price Is Right — every spot in the living room had an assigned value, and landing on the mirror meant 100 points and absolute triumph.

The color aluminum Christmas trees that I still think about every December.

Birthdays at Shoney’s where you earned a dollar for every year you’d been alive — which felt like an absolute fortune at age six.

Baths in the tub with Michele and our dolls while grandma brushed my hair for what felt like hours.

The toy bins on the porch. The swing in the big oak tree. Every single minute of it.

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What Their Legacy Still Means to Me

Losing grandma when I was just seven years old was devastating in the way that losses at that age are — confusing, sudden, and permanent. Watching grandpa fade away during my middle school years was a different kind of hard. I am grateful my dad made me visit him in the nursing home, and I only wish I had gone even more.

But their story didn’t end there, and that’s something I love deeply. I love how they adopted my dad and gave him everything they had — working tirelessly to send him to Porter-Gaud and then USC. I love how they took a leap and bought a place on Isle of Palms when there was no bridge and practically no one else there. I love how they opened their arms to others who needed family. I love that their home still stands and still holds us.

And I love that when we get on the boat now and move through those same Lowcountry waterways — the same creeks Midnight navigated for decades — I can feel them there. My memories of grandparents in the Lowcountry aren’t just memories. They’re a presence. They’re Hamlin Creek. They’re the pluff mud and the cold beer and the bingo winnings and the butter in every dish.

They are, and always will be, my Midnight and Marie.

Happy Memorial Day, with all my love, Angel

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Learn more about Angel Holmes and everything she’s passionate about at sipindipity.com/angel-holmes.