Thanks to Mama

Thanks to Mama, I can write this. She woke me every morning, fixed me breakfast, and made sure I was clean and dressed appropriately for school. She stressed the importance of education and taught me and my older brother to be proud of our academic successes. Mama being proud of me made me love school, learning.

Thanks to Mama, I fell in love with reading as soon as I learned how to decode the meaning of words on a sheet of paper. She taught by example in most instances and her love of reading rubbed off on me. She took me to bookstores, the Huntersville library, or Eckerd Drugs’ paperback section to feed my addiction. I can’t remember begging for candy on trips to the store (though I probably did). I do remember beginning my pitch for a new book as soon as we got in the car and headed out of Westminster Park towards the stores in Charlotte (and, later, Huntersville). It was Mama who slipped a twenty dollar bill into my hand on days when the bookmobile was visiting Long Creek Elementary. Those Book Fair days were more exciting for me than my birthday, but not quite as good as Christmas. 

Thanks to Mama, I learned to cook from a very young age. Because my mama could COOK! I always loved spending time with her. Since Mama worked a nine to five job, five days a week, a good part of her time at home was spent in the kitchen, cooking for our family. Mama made the world’s best fried chicken, “goulash” (hers was a mix of chunks of beef, carrots, potatoes, onions, celery, and spices in a savory gravy), and sourdough rolls. She baked the best Fruit Cake Cookies, Pineapple Upside Down Cake, Goodie Bars, and birthday cakes (chocolate for me, peanut butter for my brother). Mama taught me to cook green beans and pinto beans, fried squash or okra, sweet potato or scalloped potato casseroles, sautéed carrots, cabbage or spinach. Daddy’s garden provided leaf lettuce, green onions, turnips, tomatoes, strawberries, corn, zucchini, yellow squash, peppers, okra, field peas and green beans that Mama taught me how to turn into salads, sides, and desserts. Her only fail (well, really mine) was teaching me to make biscuits. She prepared hers by feel with no set recipe. I never mastered the art. Her biscuits put mine to shame. The memories I have of standing in a chair at the kitchen table stirring, measuring, patting out patties or cookies, peeling, snapping, shelling, or shucking with Mama are some of my sweetest. 

Thanks to Mama, I learned to keep a clean house. We earned our allowance by performing age-appropriate chores. I don’t leave the house to this day without making my bed … even if the bed is in a rental house at the beach. Mama taught me to value cleanliness and firmly believed the proverb “cleanliness is next to godliness”. When I was growing up, Saturday mornings were for cleaning: bathrooms, floors, kids’ rooms. We didn’t leave the house for shopping or fun until our chores were completed. Chores done, allowance in hand, we would head out to shop or play. This principle is alive and well in my own home sixty years later.  Though in recent years I have relaxed my rigidity a little, I am still happiest leaving when I know I will be coming home to a clean house. 

Thanks to Mama, my happy place is the beach. When we were growing up we ALWAYS spent at least a week in the summer and, quite a few years, Thanksgiving week at the beach. Mama and Daddy loved combing North Myrtle Beach for sharks’ teeth and taking long walks along the shore. Having learned from experience that I wasn’t as enamored of those long walks (“Daddy, carry me!”), Dad would often walk a good distance in front of us, leaving Mama to deal with my whining. She would distract me with pretty shells or propose that we race to the next umbrella down the beach. Both of my parents loved seafood and we rarely missed a night of heading back into North Carolina to Calabash, the “Seafood Capital of the World”, which was about a twelve mile drive, but felt like two hours to my young self after a full day of sun, sand and surf. It was Mama who dried my tears when I didn’t feel up to the trek or the long lines of people who stood out in the hot August sun, waiting for their chance to savor Calabash shrimp, flounder, oysters, or, my favorite, deviled crab. That love rubbed off on me, too, and Calabash is now on my list of favorite places. For the years of my adult life that I was lucky enough to have my Mama as my best friend (she died when I was thirty-six), we took many mother/daughter trips to the shore. We would spend our days searching for sharks’ teeth, taking really long walks on the beach, reading in lounge chairs, and savoring seafood. We enjoyed many dinners at my favorite restaurant in the world (so far), The Sea Captain’s House in Myrtle Beach.

Mama always said she wanted to be reincarnated as a seagull. I’ve told of my many encounters with seagulls since her death in earlier blogs. I still love to walk the shore and imagine her soaring above me, enjoying the view, watching over me.

Thanks, Mama.