Memories Of Mama

While growing up we would all wear a red rose to church to indicate our mother was alive. Someone wearing a white rose meant their mother was deceased. I don’t know the origin of this custom. It’s gotta be a Southern thing.

We also still pull over to the side of the road when a funeral passes by. I think this is a Southern tradition too.

Mother’s Day remembrance has grown and grown. Back in the day, our family would load up in the blue and white Ford Fairmont wagon and drive to my Mamaw’s house some 90 miles away so we could celebrate. My mother and her sister would prepare a feast around chicken and dumplings, green beans, and stewed potatoes, with my grandmother making the piece de resistance dessert, chess pie. She died not leaving the recipe. I have tried many a time to duplicate that filling to no avail.

I only had one aunt and five cousins. My grandfather’s favorite was my aunt, no doubt about it. My mother was my grandmother’s favorite. When I hear people say that they don’t have a favorite child I laugh knowing that’s not true.

If my mother makes it to October 27th she will be 106 years old. I believe she will hold the record for oldest in our family. She lived through two World Wars, two pandemics, raising me. I always said I was the only hell she ever raised.

She made great peanut butter cookies and coconut cakes. Her initials are funny, MOM, Maxine Oakley McCarter.

Happy Mother’s Day Monticello MOM’s.