The best childhood times are kinda like old and loved recipes–favorite memories, lovingly prepared and served up by family and even family friends. And although there was an odd assortment of those family friends while growing up–from Junie, the cheery rotund lesbian with the jet black ponytail and red lipstick, to Frank, the gentle and open-minded Methodist minister–they are happily always with me. Some now gone and others a phone call away, they all made positive, indelible marks. One of the most fondly remembered was Sally or as I’ve described her to others, Spoolie Woman.

After moving out of my grandmother’s house in Annandale, we rented the end unit of a 1940′s triplex in the Rosemont section of Alexandria. The boxy brick structure lacked any architectural interest despite its tall white columns, and its only redeeming feature was an enclosed porch, which hung off the back of the second story. The porch’s simple wood frame, screened and supported by stilts, opened into the 10-foot-wide kitchen of many coats of viscous paint and linoleum flooring. Besides a place for mild weather meals, the porch also offered a bird’s eye view of the alley below and surrounding neighborhood and came in handy for lighthearted pranks. My mother had forged a friendship with the youngest of Sally’s daughters, and the two of them would fry hamburgers, open the door to the porch and fan the irresistible aroma in Sally’s direction. They may even have timed her to see how long before she came knocking.

Sally was friend, next-door neighbor, mom to three, wife of the station agent, Salvation Army volunteer and part-time caretaker of me, an eight-year-old latchkey kid. A short, heavyset woman, wearing 50 or so years and a cotton sleeveless muu-muu and flip flops, her poor breasts had lost their fight with gravity and took residency when her waistline moved out. A hairnet restrained her graying Toni perm, and she had the raspy voice of a long-time smoker, although she had never smoked. The thin walls that defined our space would also subject us to the breadth of that voice as she bellowed out to her two high school aged daughters each and every morning. “Sally’s up,” my mom would sigh.

But I had my own times with Sally. During school’s summer break, come weekdays, I was totally under her care. Darting back and forth between our place and hers, I would sometimes join in with Sally’s humdrum activities of cleaning the house and watching the soaps, the reward being a big pot of what Sally called “spoolie”–basically, homemade beefaroni. After lunchtime bowls of the noodley concoction, topped off with her banana pudding–layers of Jello pudding, vanilla wafers and spotty bananas–Sally, in her rough but kind voice would beckon to me to “C’mon and lie down here on this cool floor in front of the fan and let’s take us a nap.” So there we’d stretch out with our full bellies…on her scrubbed and waxed linoleum floor, in front of the box fan she had set in the doorway of the porch, throw pillows from the couch beneath our heads. And there we’d nap, a respite from the D.C. heat and too much spoolie and pudding.

So, not only did Sally serve up a happy memory of a loving caretaker, but also of a simple recipe of macaroni, onions, ground beef and canned tomatoes that I have carried throughout my life and that satisfies my nostalgia like no Chef Boyardee ever could.