I grew up in awe of my maternal grandmother. A farmer’s daughter, she rarely had idle time. Nearly every hour of the day, she was busy—cooking, managing the books for the farm, making phone calls, volunteering at the church—and that was when she was retired! This is a woman who woke every morning at the ungodly hour of 5:30 am (so I thought then; I’ve since discovered I share her love of early mornings) and often had a pound cake cooling on the counter by the time the rest of us stumbled groggily into the kitchen.

I can’t imagine how her workload looked when she had my mother and aunt at home and helped my grandfather, the traveling salesman, keep track of his travel and orders and expenses. They lived in Atlanta then, and to help manage all that work and the obligatory social engagements she had to maintain as a good corporate wife, she had a housekeeper named Alice.

I don’t remember Alice well, but I do remember her ability for succinct and accurate interpretation. Alice gifted the family with one of our favorite phrases. My grandmother was busier than usual and worried about it (a family trait), when Alice finally pinned her with a look and said, “Now slow down, Mrs. Bero—you know you ain’t no ’lectric elephant.”

None of us has ever understood why she picked that particular phrase, but it fit so well we now use it all the time. A case in point: this past week. Despite a very relaxing break, I managed to contract acute bronchitis again, and so I spent the first three days of the new school year at home in the bed. I dragged myself to school Friday out of an overdeveloped sense of responsibility, but I’m paying for it this morning with a headache and a relapse. That’ll teach me.

Alice was right. Nobody is this family’s “a ‘lectric elephant,” and I’d do well to remember it.