I love being from the south. I was born and raised here. I love all of the well-known southern traditions. Some folks may poke fun of these things but truth be told, most of them make up who I am. Southern cooking is one of those things. I love to eat! But down here, meals are more than just a time where we provide our bodies nutrients that our blessed by our Heavenly Father. When we get together, what we will eat is almost as important as the reason we are meeting in the first place. Most of our holiday planning is spent at the grocery store trying to decipher the ingredients on the worn index card that has been passed down from great, great Grandmaw. Every family has that meal that you look forward to. Mine was always my Grandmaw’s Sweet Potato Pie, Dad’s Honey Ham or Aunt Donna’s Mac N Cheese. Combine that with Momma’s Dressing and BAAAMM! You would be in a food coma on the couch before the football game started.
Meal time is a big deal around here. Every night my little family sits together at the dinner table. We have a little tradition where we always ask each other to talk about the best part of their day and the worst part. We always know that, that moment will be the best part of the Captain’s day, and no matter what we have for dinner Connor isn’t hungry but always has room for dessert.
I remember as a little girl taking food to friends when they were sick, going through a tough time or had just welcomed a new baby in the world. I am sure you all can remember baking a special treat and finding the perfect dish to put it in to take to the new neighbors. It’s just what we do.
Never have I ever seen anything like what happened the week my Grandmaw passed away.
My family was flooded with meals for the next week. That same day friends were bringing over everything from trash bags and coffee to baked spaghetti and this amazing delight called “Ooey Gooey”.
Since I lived with Kimmie that week, each time another meal was brought in, we would just cry. We were overwhelmed with the amount of love and kindness that was shown to us. It seems like something so simple, but take it from me it means so much. It meant that ladies (and gentlemen) were thinking of what we were going through and wanted to help lighten our load. Many of them knew the pain of losing a loved one and simply wanted us to know that they felt our hurt. It meant that they were praying for us and begging that our hearts be filled with as much comfort as our bellies were. Sharing food was their way of telling us we were loved.
As we would eat each of these meals, chatter at the dinner table would eventually get to Grandmaw. We would laugh through the tears recalling the way she prepared meals; always in a fuss over the details and always preparing enough for an army. We would talk about how she would love each of the dinners and would insist that no one should have gone out of their way to make them. We would talk about memories of sharing meal time with her and how she managed to burn the stove up about a zillion times. By the end of dinner with no mess to clean up, our hearts were full and so were our bellies.
The friends who are more like family knew that. Each of them knew that bringing us dinner meant so much more than feeding us. Heck, most of the time, we insisted that they stay and eat with us. We loved telling stories and sharing who Grandmaw was with them, sometimes they would stay well past midnight.
Somehow, in that week, we experienced a hurt and void in our hearts that took our breath and a love and joy that went beyond understanding all at the same time.
To every single person who helped plan, deliver, shop, pickup, or cook- Thank you, from the bottom of my heart!! It is impossible for me to put into words the gratitude that we feel.
