Biscuits and Gravy

It is hard to believe that my mom died sixteen years ago this month. One of my life goals is to write about her and try somehow to capture her essence. I plan someday to write a memoir all about her. She was a remarkable woman, complicated and magical all in the same moment. She died of cancer and fought to the end. Everybody loved her. Even when she was difficult, which was often, she was still loved. She had a quality that made her unlike anyone else. It was more than charisma and it is something that I find myself often trying to figure out in quiet moments. She had a gift for "telling things as they are" and strangely, people couldn't get enough of it. Perhaps the southern accent softened the blow somehow. I remember even as a child witnessing it. I knew she could get away with things that us normal people just couldn't. I'm not going to lie, it was sometimes difficult growing up in her shadow. I often wondered why I wasn't more like her and thought there was something wrong with me and my sensitivity to things that seemed to not phase her in the slightest. I didn't subscribe to her philosphy of as she put it, "lob it off and set it adrift". I had to deal with things and those things hurt and hurt deeply, unable to simply be brushed aside. Even so, I love her and miss her.  I often find myself wanting to call her up and ask her how she dealt with different aspects of motherhood. I try to tell myself that her answers wouldn't satisfy anyway as she wasn't one to reflect on things. She simply reacted the best she could in the moment and never second guessed herself or looked back and wondered what would have been. At least that is what I imagine her answer would be in order to lessen the pain of not having the possiblity of that conversation.

So in her honor I offer this short piece knowing that it does not do her memory justice. It is only a small hint of her personality. It also honors two other amazing women in my family who have all gone home. I do have peace in knowing that mom has family with her right now as she sits at the feet of Jesus and that some day I will be there with her too. 

Biscuits and Gravy 

Hearing the ting, ting, ting of a fork hitting the inside of a glass bowl in the kitchen always takes me back to simpler days when someone I loved was making breakfast. The smell of biscuits in the morning all buttery and steamy, hot with their fluffy tops and crispy bottoms is like heaven itself on a plate. There is nothing like waking up to the popping and sizzling hiss of bacon and sausage. I can still smell the smoky, sweet haze in the kitchen air. That spicy brown sausage gravy made with the pan drippings would make me want to lick the bowl or at least lick the stray gravy that would somehow get on my fingers. I swear I would have taken a bath in that stuff if I could have.

How I long for the comforting sight of seeing Mom flour her laminate counter top and mix the biscuit ingredients: Crisco, salt, baking powder, buttermilk, and flour. Of course the flour had to be White Lily. Only, my mom would pronounce it in her thick, melodic Alabama accent. Even the packaging claims that it has been a “Southern tradition since 1883”. No matter what state we had moved to Mom would hunt down the local grocery store manager and insist they carry it for her and they always would. There was a rhythm and a pattern to the kneading that I can still picture in my mind, but my hands won’t imitate it. It’s like knowing a song so well you can hear it perfectly in your head, but being unable to utter a single note.  She would use an old four ounce tomato paste can as a biscuit cutter. I don’t know if she even owned an actual biscuit cutter. Maybe she thought that it would affect the thickness of her biscuits or maybe that was just simply the way that her mom had always made hers. Regardless, the perfectly rounded flat circles with the one exception from the leftover dough which Mom called the “ugly biscuit” would be placed on a cookie sheet and left to bake into the perfection that we would race to the table for each and every Saturday morning.  

 I have seen that gravy made a thousand times if I have seen it made once and always by the masters: Grandmother, Aunt Lynn, Aunt Kay, and of course Mom. I can’t make the gravy even though I know the steps and the ingredients. I don’t think many of us cousins can. I have heard rumor of my older cousin Randy doing it justice and his older brother Jay told us one Thanksgiving morning that he knew how. Immediately, he demonstrated his skills and some brave soul actually ate it, but gluey, tasteless gravy is a travesty to me and one that I will not participate in for fear of the wrath of God himself. After all, gravy is sacred in the south, right up there with Sunday dinner after church and seeing your Mama on Mother’s Day. 

Sounds corny but maybe the missing ingredient in my biscuits and gravy is love. That is always how I felt when I ate them. I was special enough for someone to get up early, take the extra time, and mess up the kitchen. How I long to wake up one morning and smell that country breakfast simmering just for me. This time I won’t tell Mom that I’m on a diet. And this time I won’t tell Grandmother that I need to watch my weight. And this time I won’t tell Aunt Lynn that the fat count is too high. I’ll just savor it all and in the end, use my leftover biscuit to “sop up” the rest of that fried egg with the yoke running all over my plate looking like the sunshine that it truly is.