Playing Hooky at Grandma’s Deli

Dear Diary:

My Ukranian grandmother, Katie, and Russian grandpa, Mike, had a grocery store/deli in Hell’s Kitchen on 10th Avenue between 48th and 49th Streets from the 1940s until I was a teenager in 1969.

“Home Cooking” was Katie’s logo. The words were proudly displayed in flaglike precision on the awning that shaded her storefront window. Her specialties were homemade chicken soup, cheese blintzes, pierogies made from scratch, and ham sandwiches with meat sliced as thin as the finest stationery.

One day I decided to surprise my grandparents by arriving unannounced with a vanful of friends. We had cut high school in Princeton, N.J., immersed in the spring fever of mid-May. I yelled out “Grandma!” as I saw her apron-decked persona standing outside her store.

Katie marched over to the van of teens and gave me a tight hug as I introduced her to my four comrades. Her piercing blue eyes took in the long hair of the two boys as she made the sign of the cross. She hugged my female friends and then smiled brightly and said, “You are just in time for lunch!”

We feasted in her back-room kitchen on blintzes, stuffed cabbage, soup and cream soda. Dessert was rock candy from her legendary glass jar and ice cream from her freezer.

With glee we five bid goodbye with full stomachs. Upon opening the van door I glanced back at my grandma as saw her on her black telephone. She gestured me back into the store and said, “Here,” as she handed me the phone. “It is your school. I had the number from mama. They want to know where you are.”

Read all recent entries and our updated submissions guidelines. Reach us via email diary@nytimes.com or follow @NYTMetro on Twitter using the hashtag #MetDiary.