The aroma of fresh buttermilk biscuits and coffee are swirling through the house. It's seeping from underneath my great grandmother's bedroom door. She is a second mother to all us kids, cousins, and neighborhood kids. We all called her ‘mother’, and often ran to her when moms, the women who carried us for nine months, weren’t giving us what we wanted.
There is a sizzle, a crack, and pop. I know that's bacon cooking on my Mother’s old black, burnt frying pan. This is a Mississippi morning, and where some of my fondest food memories live.
After lingering in the bedroom for a while, my senses overwhelmed with the breakfast that is cooking down the hall, I wake up and start following the aroma. My cousins are anxiously sitting at the table, and Mother is at the stove smiling. Her caramel life-worn face shoots me a smile. I'm only eight, but she pours me a cup of coffee. I go to the pantry and reach for the generic creamer, and sugar. I've tasted a lot of different coffees since those Mississippi mornings, but this coffee will forever be my favorite. When the biscuits finish baking, Mother brings the piping hot pan to the table. Me, my cousin, and young uncle are eagerly waiting for our turn to pick a soft, moist biscuit from the pan. No KFC, Church's Chicken, or any fast food joint can lay a finger on Mother’s biscuits. We pour this rich, thick maple molasses that came in large mason jars on our plates. It’s so rich and thick it takes what seems like forever to seep from the jar to the plate. With our hands we dip the biscuits in the syrup. This was the kind of food that fed more than your stomach. It fed something deep inside of you, something intangible. It’s like I could taste the love and attention Mother cooked into the meal. At the old circular table surrounded by my kinfolk I felt part of something, part of something lasting.
I've been thinking about these early Mississippi mornings a lot lately. I'm riding another weight roller coaster, and after way too many highs on the scale, I'm starting to wonder how I ever got here. Some nights I’ll lay on the couch, miserable, homesick, and alone. Then I feel a hunger rising in my stomach, punching, kicking, and demanding for something to fill the emptiness inside of me. It compels me to venture to the kitchen, and stand in front of the refrigerator. What I am really hungry for? I grab a coke, a few cookies, and head back to the couch. After my late night snack is consumed, my stomach is happy, but something else is still empty.
The sugary mix of caffeine and chocolate are not filling the loneliness or take me back to those mornings where I felt so whole and complete. Growing up, food was not just about nutrition or fueling the body. Food brought my family together, it comforted us, and it was love. I've carried these feelings about food from childhood. I realize now that sometimes when I overate I'm really trying to fill my soul with the same warm feelings I got on those Mississippi morning.
When I can't fix anything in my world at least I can fix a good meal for myself. The food cure doesn't fix the problem, but for those few seconds I'm lost in a haze, trying desperately to feed the little emptiness in my heart.
Our family is so far away. I’m living in the mountains trying to start my adult life. My sweet, warm Mother is now in a nursing home with little memory of those post sunrise meals. She has lost her youngest child, my aunt, and it’s caused a rift in the family that can’t seem to be healed.
My cousin and young uncle can barely relate anymore. The last time I went down South, I sat at that table where we had those sweet, rich, fat inducing breakfasts. I’m hungry for that feeling again. But, as I sit there in a house my Mother can’t call home anymore—I know no meal can fix where life has taken us or transport me back to those days that started with the feeling of sun on my face, and the smell of a family that loved deeply.
