Susan Writes

As you celebrate Mother’s Day on Sunday, picture your mother in your mind. Where is she? My mom could be inside or outside, and she was always busy.  

              Using a needle and thread, she made clothes for herself and me that were finer than those sold on 5^th Avenue in New York City, and the living room drapes she sewed hung with perfect pleats. When I heard Mom and Dad discuss money matters and major purchases, I knew that she held the checkbook and it balanced to the penny every month. 

            Mom grew beautiful flowers, especially irises and roses, and even though, Dad, my brother, and I worked in our yard and vegetable garden, Mom was the general.  She made flower arrangements for Sunday church services, and when I was a twelve she opened a flower shop in our home’s basement.  Her skills and talents to create and manage money made the business successful.  So successful that its profits paid for my brother’s and my college educations.

            After retirement, Mom and Dad took up golf and most Wednesday and Sunday afternoons, they and my aunt and uncle were on the golf course.  Those were also the years that Mom began making quilts, all pieced and stitched by hand, one for each of her three grandchildren.

            Many pictures of Mom float through my head, but most vivid are those of her in her kitchen.  She’s wearing an apron, made from a twenty-five-pound flour bag, tied around her waist.  Using her green-handled pastry cutter, she cuts Crisco into Martha White self-rising flour, then adds buttermilk, and stirs just enough to moisten the dry ingredients.  Then she dumps the dough onto a flour-covered pastry cloth and kneads it a few times, rolls it gently with a rolling pin, and cuts out biscuits.

            Mom uses that same biscuit dough to make a favorite wintertime dessert, butter sticks.  While butter melts in a big glass casserole dish in the oven, she cuts the flattened dough into rectangles about the size of a small candy bar.  Then she coats both sides of each piece of dough with melted butter and places them in the dish.  The dough gets a good heavy-handed sprinkling of sugar and bakes while Mom, Dad, my brother, and I eat supper.   

            A big black skillet sits on the front stove eye, and Mom pours oil into it.  She dips chicken pieces in milk and then drops them into a brown paper grocery bag that holds a mixture of flour, salt, and pepper.  Mom hands me the bag to shake and she sprinkles flour onto the oil to test if it’s hot enough for frying chicken.  With tongs, she gently places each chicken piece into the hot oil.  After a few minutes, she turns the chicken to brown to other side and she knows, just by looking, exactly when the chicken is done – crisp on the outside, juicy tender inside.

            There aren’t printed photos of Mom cooking, maybe because it didn’t seem like anything special, but now, I know it was.  Her cooking not only fed my body, it nourished my soul. ####

Filed under: Mother | Tagged: Mother, Mother's Day |