Stew and stories

When my fuel runs out, and day-to-day living proves exhausting, I know a cure: Mama. Throw in Daddy and his off-color humor, and it just gets better from there. 

My husband and I recently packed the car with enough clothes for a couple of days, and drove the hour-and-a-half to Spartanburg, S.C., where Mom and Dad, both well into their 70s and waiting on Jesus, live in a sprawling rancher on a cul-de-sac. Walking into their home brings sheets of peace more comforting than those 1,000-threadcount Egyptian cottons. Something about returning home feels right, and I’m fortunate that at my age, my parents are still alive and healthy. 

If someone tied a blindfold over my eyes, I’d know I was in Mama’s house. The smell, a combination of her cooking and cleaning, and the sounds of settling wood, carpets and appliances, is distinctive. I’d know it anywhere.

Mama greeted us with huge hugs and declarations of love, wearing her pink lipstick and “happy” clothes from Stein Mart. I drank in the scent of her perfume and hairspray. Mama’s tall and blonde, not by nature but by choice on the blonde issue. Mean bones don’t find space in her frame, and her heart is about as big as a harvest moon.

“I’ve been cooking some salmon stew for you and cut up five pounds of potatoes to make it extra chunky for Donny’s bike race tomorrow, so he’ll be carbed up,” Mama said, wiping her hands on a dish towel. She hugged me, gave me the once-over with discerning eyes, checking my health at a glance. 

For the next 48 hours, we were pampered. We’d come alone, leaving the kids back home, needing a break to replenish our spirits. 

Mama reversed the role she played when my younger sister and I were kids—then she’d direct us towards independence by making us clean up after dinner, de-clutter our rooms, scrub our own bathrooms and fold clothes. Now, she treated us like VIP guests and wouldn’t let us so much as lift a tea glass unless she’d re-filled it. 

“I know it sounds poor, but we love salmon stew,” she said to my husband, who eyed the chowder-like chunks of fish and milky potatoes before taking a bite. 

Daddy perked up with his bourbon and water, his mirth brought on by Maker’s Mark, the brown courage in his bloodstream making tales slip from his lips. He’s chatty, and funny. Unless someone gets him onto politics, then I have to leave the room.

But salmon stew, served with steam, sweet pickles and a gorgeous salad, also makes him gleeful. Maybe more so than the bourbon or the beautiful bride he married 55 years ago, still as ageless and blooming as on her wedding day.

“Your great-grandmother ran a boarding house and fed everyone from the mill who wasn’t in the war,” he said. “Your granny made this stew, too.”

I used to make the stew for my roommates in Myrtle Beach, when three of us cub reporters lived in a beach house across the road from the ocean, and didn’t care that we didn’t have a heater for winter or that one of our showers was outside under the slats and stilts. 

Memories of food and growing up tend to hit me during fall and winter, seasons of reflection, stillness and a slower pacing, unless one counts Christmas. 

“I’ve got a wonderful cake with walnuts and some vanilla bean ice cream for dessert,” Mama said, after we raved about her salmon stew, each of us downing more than two bowls. She scurried around the recently-remodeled kitchen, soup bowls clanking and replaced with plates of cake, ice cream sliding off the top. 

“Tomorrow, I’m taking you shopping,” she told me. “You need to color up that boring brown wardrobe of yours. The Goodwill is OK for some things, but you’ve got lots of public events and speeches, so we’re going to Stein Mart’s 12-hour sale. Plus I’m a preferred customer and have 40 percent more off.”

My wardrobe tends to be either retro or witchy because I love sleeves that fan out like the bells of trumpets. Winged clothing is my thing, not hers. She’s all about fiery corals, greens like brand new Fescue popping up and yellows as vibrant as peaking lemons. 

As we finished our cake and ice cream, and told all the favorite family stories as if we’d not heard them hundreds of times, Mama paused before resuming her domestic duties.

“Have I told y’all how much I just love my family?” she said, hands wriggling in the air—dancing hands. 

She says this all the time. We’ve come to expect it. Just like the blessing we say as we hold hands before such family dinners, the steam of hot stew under our bowed heads.