Christmas with Big Mamma and Jake
(Editor’s note: This is the second of a five-part series by former El Dorado resident Brenda Miles. See the next installment in the Dec. 11 edition of the News-Times.)
Supper on Christmas Eve was homemade vegetable soup with cornbread, slathered in butter, and banana pudding topped by a thick meringue for dessert. We knew we had to slack off on this evenin’ meal to make room for the big dinner coming tomorrow.
None of the grandchildren were able to make it this year, but they had sent pictures of their little ones that we all admired after supper. Everyone tried to make appropriate comments so no grandparent would feel slighted.
After the ten o’clock news we all started our trek upstairs. There were the two big bedrooms I mentioned before, each holding two double beds and a cot. Then there was the little room in the middle.
“Whose turn is it to get Martha Sue this year?” I asked while we women were in the kitchen for a glass of water to take our nightly pills. “Lou!” Mary Jeanette quickly said, with a sly grin on her face. These two had never gotten on too well throughout all the years of being in the same family.
You see, Martha Sue snored and wheezed through the night louder than any lumberjack and so we ‘passed her around’ between us girls like a dried-out fruitcake.
In the early years our kids slept in the small room or on pallets downstairs. So this smaller bed had only been available once they married and stopped coming to Big Mama’s… except for maybe an hour or two on rare occasions.
Martha Sue was assigned to a different bed-mate each year who, by sleeping with her, had the consolation prize of enjoying the only feather bed in the house.
Sated with soup and a last bite of pudding, we ascended the stairs, leaving Mamma and Old Jake in her chair by the fireplace.
Christmas morning found us all gathered back in the familiar kitchen dining on slab bacon fried only until it was good and warm, eggs fried in the bacon grease until they were brown and lacy around the edges, and biscuits so huge they would put McDonald’s buns to shame. Pure butter dripped from our fingers as we gripped the biscuits that held Mamma’s fig preserves hanging out the sides.
We washed all the dishes and cleaned the kitchen before we went into the front room for “the tree.” This year Stella had gotten my name and she gave me a hot pink night shirt (too large!) with a turquoise sheep on the front that read, “EWE AIN’T FAT EWE IS JUST FLUFFY.”
I smiled between clamped teeth and said, “Thank you, Stella. I can’t wait to wear it.”
She was nibbling at a left over biscuit she’d made a hole in and filled with sorghum molasses as she muttered between bites, “I knew when I saw it that it was you…get it?? It was EWE!”
“I get it, Stella, and I will always think of EWE when I use it.” What I was really thinking was, ‘I can cut this stinkin’ thing up into dust rags and I will think of ewe each time I squirt it with lemon Pledge!’
You see, Stella’s girth was the joke of the family. She went from one Oprah Winfrey diet to the next with about the same amount of success as Oprah. She licked her fingers, rubbed her bloated stomach and declared she couldn’t eat another bite all day. The rest of us looked at each other and rolled our eyes until Big Mamma looked at the clock and declared, “I’ll swan! It’s 8:15. The day is half gone and we still have dinner to fix!”
Dinner at Big Mamma’s is what everybody else would call lunch. But Christmas dinner was the ultimate
meal of the year. Everyone in the house flew in to help. Jerry Don grated coconut. Stella made and crumbled cornbread for the dressing. I boned the two big hens cooked the day before. Mamma always said turkey was too dry. Jimmy Ed, who had just returned from town with a big sack of ice, crushed the pieces under a thick dishrag. Joe Bill helped Mamma make ambrosia and pulled out the cloves she had stuck in the pickled peaches. Martha Sue brought out the ‘chowchow’ from the storeroom. When she opened the lid and the spiced cabbage smell entered the room, Mamma and everybody else looked around to see if someone had made a little nuisance of himself there in the kitchen. We warmed the purple hull peas and the Kentucky wonder beans with onions that Mamma had put up last summer. We later spooned up the squash and set the big bowl next to the four pies that rested on the drainboard, their meringue at least two inches thick and perfectly browned. Stella waddled out to the pie safe and brought out the white fruitcake and the rum cake wrapped in dishtowels to keep them moist. She cut them into large portions and placed them on cake plates, licking the knife after each slice.
I finished the giblet gravy and poured it into the rose patterned gravy boat that had been in the china cabinet since I had been old enough to notice and I am now…well…I’ve gotten older, let’s just leave it at that. We carried the steaming bowls and platters laden with enough food for Cox’s army into the dining room and placed it on the table Mamma had already set. After we gathered around, Hamp asked the blessing (Jerry Don timed him at 21 minutes while Stella, sitting beside him, figited) and we sat down to Christmas dinner at exactly 1:00.
We were still nibbling and picking up last dessert crumbs by pressing them into our forks when Stella belched and then announced to the table, “Lord, I don’t know when I’ve enjoyed a meal so much, especially since I’ve been on that Slim-Fast stuff this week, getting ready for it.” She then reached across to fork a pickled okra, explaining she always liked to end her meal with something salty. The okra followed two pieces of pie and a slice of white fruitcake. We remained at the table awhile longer, too full to move.