AS CHRISTMAS DAY APPROACHES

After so many years of being a gumbo eater, this past Thanksgiving proved I can be a gumbo maker, too. Armed with my Mom's recipe and my big sister a phone call away, my daughter and I got it done.
I'm really looking forward to my sister and her family visiting during the Christmas holiday. I'm looking forward to her gumbo, too. She's already thinking about the Christmas day menu. It's times like these that I really miss my Mom. She had special Christmas dishes and glasses, and table linen. She adored the holidays. Her shopping would have been done and the house decorated. There would be homemade tea cakes and egg nog, too. Her egg nog was the only egg nog I ever wanted to drink.

Sometimes I wonder what else my Mom would have achieved in life; what greater professional heights she would have attained, had she not sacrificed for my sisters and me. Then I remember my late Auntee Lillian's dramatic retelling of Mommy's birth. The persistence of a midwife, who refused to accept that baby Myrtle was dead, is the reason a 1 pound, 1 ounce premature baby survived that October day back in 1936 in Addis, Louisiana. That Mommy lived 1 day, let alone 66 years, was a miracle.
She was meticulous, and detail oriented, well-groomed and so very neat.
"If it's supposed to be white, let it be white. If it's supposed to shine, make it shine". "Take care of your things. If you do, they will last a long time".
"Never leave your house and you're looking better than what you left behind. You never know how you're going to have to come back home".

She was a brilliant woman--quick-witted, well read, articulate, poised and always learning. To her, knowing things was just as important as the ability to find information. She was a master teacher, a disciplinarian, mentor and guide, whose dedication to her students meant sure success for them. Her generous endeavors to see them succeed never translated into lack of attention and failure at home. She cherished being a teacher, but I have a feeling she could have been the CEO of some major corporation. Obtaining a good education was so important to her. Attached to that was the ability to be self-sufficient. I never sensed that she regretted being a wife and mother, but she made sure to communicate how the consequences of the choices one makes most certainly determined the road on which one would remain. "You have to think about the future." "You have be able to take care of yourself; stand on your own two feet", she would say.
As traditional as she was where roles between women and men were concerned, our independence meant a lot to her. "You have to get that piece of paper. You have to be twice as good". A woman who couldn't "do anything" puzzled her, though. A lazy "nasty" woman was someone she couldn't understand. As academically savvy and professional as she was, one could eat off of her floor. She could clean, iron, wash, sew, scrub, garden, and still hold an intellectually stimulating conversation with anyone. She was responsible, dedicated and resourceful. She was a committed wife, mother, grandmother, aunt, and friend--and Lord, could she cook. Daddy said she couldn't always "burn" like she did, and one of the first gifts he bought her was a cookbook. That cookbook is dog-eared, today; its pages out of order; its cover hanging on for dear life, and spruced up with green contact paper. That cookbook was one gift that didn't go to waste. Mommy was a master in the kitchen and the bearer of an incredible sense of smell. "Somebody check the oven! Is something burning?" If she asked, something was. "You can't walk away when you're cooking."
When she passed away early in the morning on February 4, 2003, I was there. She'd fought so hard to stay. It seemed unfair for cancer to have wracked the body of someone who wasn't abusive to herself. She'd survived rounds of radiation and chemotherapy, only to be stricken by a pulmonary embolism. Even in death, she was teaching. "Don't put off anything. Enjoy your life while you can. Don't let anybody hold you back, or tell you what you can't do. For God's sake, be happy".
I know there were so many things that she wanted to do. Writing a book was one of them. She told me in our last conversation. I'm so glad that my little sister found the recipes my Mom had written. (Her penmanship was beautiful, too). Perhaps Mommy knew we'd need them one cold day when "sandwiches wouldn't be enough." Perhaps she knew that one day we'd embrace all of the delicious fuss that holidays bring.
I used to hate passing by McDonald's, as a child, and wonder why we couldn't always stop. "We have food at home", Mommy would say. I know, now, what a blessing that is.