More Mom Memories

Living out near the ends of the earth reminds me of days long gone when Sundays not only included Sunday School and church, and maybe if we were lucky getting to eat out at the cafeteria or the El Patio Mexican restaurant, but most Sundays when we were younger included a Sunday afternoon drive.  To my brother Doug and me, B.O.R.I.N.G!  To my mom, a very pleasant way to spend an afternoon.  My dad would drive us all around the surrounding countryside on the Farm to Market Roads Texas is so famous for.  If we were to travel those very same roads today, we'd be smack dab in the middle of First Colony, New Territory, and Cross Country Ranch.  It seems like there is always a historical marker on most roads and my dad usually wanted to stop and read the marker out loud to us...  But my mother would usually say, "Can't we just see it from the car?  That became one of our favorite family sayings.  Funny as time has gone by and my sense of adventure has lessened and my knees make it difficult at times, I find myself thinking or saying the same thing, "Can't we see it from the car?"  I almost missed out on seeing the model home that won our hearts last January because I was tired and said I would wait in the car while Roy and Peggy went inside the house.  So glad I changed my mind. 

My mom made occasions fun.  She always baked our favorite cake for our birthdays.  At Easter she made a cake that looked like an Easter Bunny and she encouraged us to help her decorate it.  If she baked a pie, somehow there always  just happened to be extra dough.  She would roll out the dough, put butter, sugar and cinnamon on it and roll it up like a jelly roll and cut the dough into bite size pieces and bake them along with the pie.  My mom also had a great recipe for iced sugar cookies that we made every Christmas.  Even after I was married, my mom would help me bake those cookies to give as gifts when money was tight for Roy and me. 

Last Sunday when we ate Chinese food with Bill and Peggy, we all remembered eating chop suey at home, out of a can, made by Chung King.  You made rice, heated up the contents of the can and put crunchy noodles on the top.  For the longest time my brother Doug and I didn't like chop suey.  We learned not to mix everything up but keep the rice and noodles separate from the junk we didn't like.  We couldn't leave the table until our plate was clean.  We'd wait till Mom got busy in the kitchen and Dad was reading the paper.  Carefully, Doug and I would put the chop suey back in the serving bowl and then eat our rice and crispy noodles.  No one was the wiser until much later in life, when we told Mom what we had done. She wasn't too happy to be told of this and other dinner hijinks.  Doug and I were not fans of oatmeal for breakfast.  Mom didn't serve it very often, but when she did, we would put up quite a fuss.  We called oatmeal boo after awhile.  Why, because when we'd ask what's for breakfast, she say oatmeal and we would cry boo. 

My mom had a quirky side.  She loved her church and her women's Sunday School class.  There were several years she had a teacher that didn't talk very loud and my mom complained she could not hear her.  This teacher participated in the fine Baptist tradition of giving out verses to different ones in the class to read out loud and always called on my mom.  My mom never cared too much to read verses aloud.  She told me once she had a dream that she was in Sunday School and the teacher asked her where they were in the reading of verses out loud .  In her dream she answered, "How in the hell would I know?"  My mother never cussed.  I never heard her let a bad word slip.  In fact the one and only time I heard her say anything that remotely would be considered a bad word is when she called me a jackass.  Truth is I was probably acting like one but come on, I was in junior high and who wants to take their younger brother with them.  I was going to Astro World with friends and we just might meet some cute boys!  Oh one other thing that kind has to do with church and church attendance.   I will never forget the Sunday lunch that mom had stayed home from church to cook and prepare for the crowd of family and friends that were coming over after church.  We had all sat down, my dad sat at one end of the table, my mother at the other end (closest to the kitchen) and the rest of us were squeezed in at the table.  My dad asked my mom to say the blessing...she began her prayer and in the course of praying she thanked the Lord for the good services at church that morning.  In the midst of that sentence, she realized she hadn't been to the good services at church that morning, so she did a mid prayer correction and added, I wasn't there but You were,so I am sure they were good."

Friends were very important to my mom.  She has had good friends all through her life.  As a child I was intrigued to hear the story of my mom and her three friends who had borrowed a car and the car's  brakes didn't work.  So when they came close to her home, they slowed the car down as much as they could and my mom jumped out of the backseat onto the grass.  I've mentioned before what a prolific letter and card sender she was.  She had friends she talked on the phone with everyday and friends that she went shopping and to lunch with.  One time, Roy had rented a convertible for me and I went over to take my mom on a ride.  She said, let's go get Mary Jo.  Mary Jo was in her robe and had curlers in her hair.  As I drove the two of them they hooped and hollered like teenagers as we drove around the neighborhood and they made sure we went past all their friend's homes. 

It seems to me after writing this, the acorn doesn't fall too far from the tree.