One thing my mother never did do was anything long enough, healthy enough, happy enough... to bring her peace on the inside. It was hard to watch.
I learned how to cook watching my mother cook. Though she had cook books I never once saw her actually use a recipe. She looked at the pictures I guess, then improvised. Everything was "to the taste". Her words not mine. But it was magical. I don't use recipes either, just ingredients, like Momma.
My mother loved to watch you take the first bite of her food. And because she worked nights sometimes that bite would wake you from your sleep with her holding a bite of something too close to your sleepy-eye - encrusted face. "Just take a bite then you can go back to sleep!", she would always say. Her favorite was most anything fried, like catfish.
My mother could make anything taste good even spinach. She made the best spinach ever.
Someone I imagine was much like my mother recently passed away from a heart attack at age 59. I saw something in her eyes, something like I often saw in my own mother's' eyes. That is a crossroads between okay and not so okay. Just a feeling, but I think I am right.
Later today I am going to make spinach and the first bite I will hold up to heaven in honor of them both.
They are probably busy frying catfish for the angels in heaven. Have them angels fighting over the crispy tails.
RIH Momma Nancy
RIH Auntie Fee
Y'all look after one another. And both of you taper down that cursing up there! Dang.