My Mom

Ever since I started writing "Detach", I knew I'd eventually write about my mom. I figure today's as good a time as any; at least to scratch the surface. I'll start off easy....something we can all get through relatively painless....My Mom's cooking.

Every morning of my childhood, my mom would go to the freezer and select a packet of frozen meat and place it in the sink to thaw. As the afternoon began to wear down she would grab a skillet, a few potatoes and some type of canned vegetable. The meat was almost always fried. The only exception I can think of would be the occasional meatloaf, or the Thanksgiving turkey. There would always be potatoes. Sometimes fried, sometimes French fried, sometimes mashed or baked. There would always be a vegetable, sometimes two. We always drank ice water, except on the weekends when we went out to eat. Dad still drank it even then, but Mom and I would get cokes or iced tea.

Once in awhile Scarlett will ask me questions like "Did your mom have a special cake she fixed at Easter?" or "Did you guys ever buy frozen pizzas and doctor them up with your own ingredients?" I always have to laugh, because even though my mom had dinner on the table every Mon - Fri evening, promptly at 5:00, there wasn't a whole lot of variety...or dessert. People don't believe me when I tell them this, but I honestly don't think I ever had a pizza in my life until I was a teenager and someone took me to Pizza Hut. You see, my Dad didn't like pizza. Or spaghetti. Or chocolate. Dad didn't like anything out of the ordinary, so when I was a kid, Mom just didn't fix it.

Once in a great while Mom would fix a cake, but usually the closest thing I got to cake was a box of Ho Ho's in the pantry. Mom could make a mean peach cobbler though. And we never had anything that even remotely resembled a casserole. It's funny, but I never remember going to cookouts or parties as a child and having my mom "take a dish". If we went someplace and took food it was a watermelon or something like that.

My mother did not enjoy cooking, and she didn't do it at all the last several years of her life, but she did enjoy eating out! When I was a kid, we ate out a lot on the weekends; usually steaks. Sure, we frequented the blue collar chains like Ponderosa and Sizzler, but our favorite steaks were served at a place that's long since gone. It happened to be about a block from where Dr. Eve's office is today. We'd get T-Bone steaks and they'd be served right on the plate they were broiled on. In later years we found another cool steak place where the owner spoke with some thick accent and they'd bring melted butter in a tiny clear bottle for your baked potato. My mom loved good fried chicken too. Sometimes we'd go to restaurants where she knew they made it fresh when you ordered and she'd get it. We always had to wait and wait while they cooked the chicken and then hunted down honey packets for her to dip. Not honey mustard, it had to be pure honey. We'd be starving by the time the food came, but it was worth it to watch her dip the fresh fried chicken in the honey and eat every piece clean to the bone.

As a kid I was a picky eater. But if I didn't like something Mom was serving for dinner, she never, ever made me eat it. I could have a peanut butter sandwich or a can of spaghetti and meatballs or whatever I wanted and she never fussed. I guess that's why I don't get bent out of shape when my own daughter turns her nose up at something I fix.

My mother may not have been Paula Deen, but no matter how I've made it sound, I never felt deprived. I liked the fried meat (most of the time) and no matter what was being served I always knew that when it was 5:00, my Daddy would be home, my Mom would have dinner ready, and we'd all be together at the table. For a little girl growing up in the 1970's, that was a good and happy feeling.