Mother

 Here are two photos of my Mother, Jessie Edith, taken early and late in life. Both her siblings died before her. Her sister, Eulene, was killed on Christmas day when aged 15 by a drunk driver and her brother, Jesse by a heart attack later in life.

So that makes me the oldest survivor and while I have many more pictures of her, none are taken in the kitchen. Mother hated cooking, she had only the one thing she liked to make...fudge.No one taught her to cook as a child, she didn't pick it up as a young adult and only in her later days did she start collecting recipes. I say collect because she seldom used them and only after adjusting the cooking time severely. I've come home with new shoes that were more tender than one of her oven roasts. Conversely nothing was more tender than her pressure cooked green beans. My Father would frequently prepare the week-end meals, after one of our visits to the market.Some built in self preservation there.

She was a bit inventive, several cans of this and that vegetables with sliced hot dogs...yummm! When I joined the Navy I was the only one to gain weight. Did you know that a scallop cooked for more than 15 minutes not only bounces like a "super-ball" but is just as chewy?

Not saying we grew up mal-nourished, after all a simple glance at one of disproves that idea, but we sure didn't know what food was supposed to taste like. Took many years and a few other stories for me to eat seafood. I learned, I've seen the light...and it's a med-rare sirloin!

So what were Mothers' pleasures? Little girls, seven and little boys, four, oh you say, those are results not pleasures...infer the rest! When time permitted reading was a secret vice, along with a big Hershey's bar. Books or magazines, but the Hershey's bar stayed with her until the end. An occasional night dancing at the Silver Fox or the other club beside it while we lived on Paris St. is another memory.

Funny how you spend so many years growing up and your memories are so disjointed. The first years of your life so dependent on your parents and then they toss out into the wilderness...school and meeting other kids. Your needs and wants change almost immediately...keeping up with, etc.

Eleven of us were born and brought up by Mother and Max. No deaths, no delinquency (that we were caught at), no drugs, no drop outs, lots of military service (Navy, thank you ), a couple of degrees and marriages, with grand children to follow-they did something right.

But no, she could not cook!