Mother's Day Story - No.1

I'm a wee bit behind the actual date, but the recipes that come up next were made to honor my own mom, AKA our food critic (excluding the times my sweet husband substitutes for her while she's off partying elsewhere)!  One recipe is her own, and another her mother's. 

How will I remember these women?  No doubt the legacy of their faith.  My Grandmother Geri was a committed and devout Catholic woman, humble, demure and sweet.  She was in love with Jesus.  She was so in love and seemed so pure that we often felt she was a living saint.

My own mother struggled with this devotion of hers until she found herself falling in love with this same Jesus later in life.  Don't get me wrong, my mother practiced her religion with a passion during her children's younger years.  All seven of us kids grew up in the Catholic schools (some more than others), made our first communion, our confirmation, and confession every Saturday.  Saturday nights, my mother painstakingly polished scuffed shoes white, set the girls' hair in bobby-pins (along with her own), ensured our Sunday clothes were ironed, and, after we were tucked in bed, she managed to sneak in a bowl of freshly popped popcorn along with her beloved Pepsi (where, unlike the South, all drinks are NOT Cokes!).  Sometimes, she and dad would deviate from that - I think because we poor deprived little ones wouldn't smell the treat and peer longingly through the staircase rails when we were supposed to be in bed - and dip Oreos into hot tea.  Mmmmm.  Still one of my favorite indulgences.

Sunday mornings we were off to church, then often off to one of the grandparents' homes for breakfast; Sunday nights we said a family rosary, again, many times with the grandparents; we knelt at the family altar, found rose petals with the imprint of St. Theresa on them, had our statues of Mary and St. Francis grace the garden, and my mother tried to convert all our boyfriends or girlfriends to the Catholic faith, if, God forbid, they weren't already Catholics.  (Here she was a bit permissive with even allowing her own children to date outside the faith, as mom always resented that her own dear and bestest friend, an Episcopalian, was not permitted by the Church to stand up at her wedding.)

As I said, my mom practiced her religion with a passion, until she found a passionate relationship.  More on that later.