Exploring my Southern side in Anderson, South Carolina

Every time we visit South Carolina, I marvel at how Crayton and I, two people with such different backgrounds, ended up together.

To get to my grandmother’s house in Pico Rivera, outside Los Angeles, we take the 10 to the 57 to the 60 to the 605.

This is the road to Crayton’s grandmother’s house. It’s outside Anderson, South Carolina, which is about 40 minutes from Greenville.

We call her Oma. In the South, grandmothers generally have nicknames.

At Oma’s house, which she shares with Crayton’s grandfather, Bpa, they usually eat poached eggs on toast in the morning. Today I hovered over her shoulder and watched. She cracked them into a small skillet half-filled with water, and then spooned the water over the top when they got runny. She served them on warmed plates, kept in the oven until serving time.

My own grandmother has been known to buy pan dulce from the local bakery, if her certain favorite granddaughter is visiting around breakfast time.

I just love coming here though. We talk slower, move slower. We’re more polite. Crayton develops a cute little twang in his voice, and tells me things like, “Mash that light.” (That means turn the light off.)

On Oma and Bpa’s sunporch, you can look out over their wide, green backyard, and listen to the breeze flutter the leaves on the trees. (I’m doing that right now.) Just noticed a spider sunning himself on the screen.

When we visit South Carolina, I’m reminded all over again how lucky I am to have married into a family that doesn’t know me entirely yet, but loves me anyway. That warmth is what I want to pass on to my own kids someday. (And they’ll be doubly lucky because they’ll have their Mexican-American side, too.)

“Your great-grandmother used to call me ‘dah’lin,’ ” I’ll tell them. “She had an accent that you could listen to all day.”