Pears, A Pan, and Mama...

It was another Saturday morning spent with Mama.  I usually set aside Friday just for her but Favorite Child was in this past week and she was summarily preoccupied with his presence and maneuvering him to meet her ever-increasing whims.   Not being Favorite Child is a blessing AND a curse.  Blessedly, I very seldom measure up to favorite status, usually having to put myself in harm's way to achieve it.   Accursed is the bothersome incessant chatter of "Favorite Child this...,"  "Did you know Favorite Child that?" and worst, by far, "Favorite Child bought me a new...."  The brothers and I don't discuss favorite child activities in front of Mama.  She'll shed a crocodile tear while admonishing us that she loves us all the same.  To her mind she is absolutely correct.  We all see a difference when the REAL favorite comes home though.  Favorite Child really is quite another story for another day.

Saturday morning we went to Neely, Mississippi to pick up our Angel Food boxes from the little church twenty miles in the western woods of Greene County.  Before going to the church we took a quick jaunt a few miles more westward to the Buffalo community, halfway between Neely and McLain.  My long time friend, Murray, lives there on the old farm of his childhood.  The little house is a few miles down a narrow two-lane road lined with harvestable pine trees and fields beginning to glow with the first wave of goldenrods.  

I love the drive.  This morning the ragweed growing in the fence rows gently bowed with the breeze as if paying thankful obeisance to the allergy gods for the plentiful hay fever season about to bloom forth.  The planted pines made patterned shadows across the road that reminded me of a universal product bar code;  the car is scanning the road for the directions to Murray's home.  I'm very conscious of the fact that mine and Mama's roles are slowly but surely becoming reversed as she asks every few moments  "Is this is?"  "How far down this road is it?" "Now are you sure you know where we're going?"  Role reversal is a painful thought to accept always leading to the obvious next thought of remaining time left with her. 

 I left that  dark musing behind as the bar code roads led me on past the barn and the remaining mile or so to his home.  We'd come to pick pears.  

Mama had overheard me telling FC (Favorite Child) about the pear trees Murray's grandfather had planted, a bunch of them!  Mr. Harvison loved pears and loved tending his trees.  There are three or four old varities of pears -  all good.  It's a bit late in the season for pears but the one tree was still loaded.  Mama knew this; her hearing is not nearly as bad as she purports.  I had a foot tub for a mess of pears;

Mama, her ever-present plastic grocery sacks.  

Murray met us in the yard.   A fellow is there cutting grass and Murray's been clearing up the leggish four o'clocks and lantana, neatening the place for a good mulching before cold weather arrives.  He told us to watch out for copper heads and Mama giggled as she looked up in the trees and asked Murray had he heard about the fig tree yet.  Fortunately, no snakes are seen and the pears are uneventfully harvested.  She stops to admire the bonsai he grows.

Murray invites me to show Mama his home.  He won't come in, trying to finish the outside work by noon. 

I enjoy being in  Murray's little farm house.  There's not one thing fancy about it,  glancing at it from the road.  It's an unremarkable little old  house.  You'd never know it housed a collection of plain and ornate kerosene lamps, all beautiful in their simplicity or ornate workmanship.  

Or that he's painstakenly found oval bubble glass photo frames for old family photos.  It's not cram-packed full of antiques, just the right amount to give the feel of walking back into a comfortable time when family, friends, and good food were of much more importance than the latest model of Blackberry, gaming systems, or dire political world events.  There's not one item in his house of incredible great worth to anyone but him.  

Well.  Almost.  Mama spotted an arrangement of ceramic-on-steel dishpans hanging in the kitchen and commented on them to me.  Going through the house she made mention of the fact that it's so clean (and of course, FC keeps a clean house, too)!  It was getting close to time to pick up our boxes at the church.  Meeting Murray, ever the Southern gentleman,  on the side porch coming out,  he thanked Mama for coming to get pears, inviting her to come again. 

 And do you know?  Can you imagine?  Putting on that little-old-kindergarten-teacher's-voice she says, "Well, if you find another one of those dishpans like in your kitchen I sure would like one to make jelly in."  I'm not sure if Murray gave her the pan she desired out of the kitchen because of Mama's endearing charm or as a true token of our friendship.  It's now at her house.  She's going to cook her pear preserves in it and make sure Murray gets a pint.  We talked all the way off the porch, through the yard, and to the car; me hustling her in it and closing the door before she spotted the old wagon in Murray's shed.  

I drove us to retrieve our food boxes, picked up really good hamburgers at the Neely Store, and got Mama home and unloaded with her pears, food box, and the dish/jelly pan that I couldn't carry in, lest I ding the ceramic off.

Mama amazes me.  Her ability to finagle her every wish or wanted item is unmatched.  In the past, she's talked the county into putting in new culverts at the end of the road,  pointing out it was their own fault and bad road-grading that caused them to become dented and stopped up in the first place.  Another friend keeps her supplied with one or another beautiful pot plants out of his florist when she merely suggests she might like one,  along with fresh cut flower arrangements on her birthday, Mother's Day, and Easter.  She's persuaded physicians time after time to supply her with medicine samples - just so she won't have to make another trip into town.  She's used her finely honed  skills on her children and has, in the last five years, obtained a new roof, hydraulic wood splitter, riding lawn mower, new plumbing for the entire house, and more free cakes than I'd like to remember. 

 She's something else, for sure.  And I need to turn off the computer and get back out to her house - she needs another five pounds of sugar.  She doesn't have but one bag and she's decided to cook all the pears into preserves...now that she has a nice big pan.

Stopping By the Road on a Late-Summer Day: Picking Crabapples With Mama

Mama has crabapples to process tonight.  We stopped out on Highway 57 close to the Neely Road, where the wonderfully tart small fruit were spotted yesterday on our way to Hattiesburg.  Mama is 82.  She will be 83 in December.  She's at that age that every day she's a little slower, a little more stooped, slightly more forgetful (but don't tell her I said this) and older.  She's old.  

I think I see age settling exponentially upon her but she always manages to find the strength and ability to do what she wants, when she wants, in the manner she wishes.  She wanted to stop yesterday to pick crabapples but the dermatology appointment was waiting and she also had new lenses to be fitted in her glasses from the optometry appointment last week.  

We left Hattiesburg and drove to Lucedale to WalMart, bypassing 57 and the trees.  This morning, grumbling from the stiffness yesterday's doctor's visits had left her with, she rode with me out to Neely to pick up our Angel Food boxes at the little church there.  We discussed the crabapples again.  Rather, she discussed the fact that it would be another year without crabapple jelly because she doubted we would get back over that way.  Actually, we didn't discuss anything; she was, in her perfect passive-aggressive manner, stating that there would be no crabapple jelly this year because she wasn't going to get anywhere to pick them that I would carry her to.  Thinking about this a moment, I suggested we make the loop back through Neely and out to Highway 57.  Mama looked at me and started digging plastic grocery sacks out of the glove compartment.  Thoughts of being Favorite Child for one more day before summer ended quickly entered my mind.

This is the third time we've stopped at these same trees.  The first time was 1992.  Mama had had outpatient knee surgery at Methodist Hospital in Hattiesburg.  I didn't know about the knee surgery until a few days before it was scheduled.  I knew Mama had been having pain and problems with her knee, but she hadn't told me she had been to a doctor OR a surgeon.  Not a peep.  My brother, Joe, called on Sunday before the surgery on Thursday to see who was going to take her to the hospital and be with her for the following days after.  Whhhhat?  I called Mama.  She said she didn't want to be a bother and that someone would carry her.  Mmhhhmmmm...I quickly made arrangements for Michael's care and John Robert and I drove to Leakesville on Wednesday.  John Robert and Mama's relationship is quite another story for another day.  

He never wanted to come back to Grenada or Oxford from his MawMaw's house in Leakesville.  At the tender age of two he wanted to take care of her and there was no leaving him behind.  We left him with Mrs. Janet the morning of the surgery and Mama spotted those crabapple trees on the way to Hattiesburg.  

Her endoscopic surgery, to repair torn ligaments, was uneventful.  Three hours after arriving at the hospital, she'd forfeited the ice chips for a cup of coffee and was awake, although still a little groggy, and ready to go home.  There's a mandatory time period a patient is required to spend in post operative recovery.  Mama asked for and got her clothes and was sitting on the edge of the bed, dressed, waiting to be released well before her time there was up.  

They gave her a pain pill to keep her comfortable on the ride home:  Vicodin.  She was expediently released and made comfortable on the back seat of the car, her knee bandaged, braced, and elevated.  She was still thirsty and we stopped on Hardy Street for a cola - and then she started talking.  She talked.  And she talked. And at the point I thought she might drift off to sleep she started talking again.  The vicodin had completely wired her!  We turned on to Highway 57 toward Leakesville and she became animated with talk of the crabapples.  Jabber jabber jabber jabber jabber!!!! 


I was NOT stopping, trying to get her home and all I heard was "Slow down!  I want to see if they're still there!"  "How do you expect me to see them in the back seat with you going so fast?"  "We need to stop so you can pick some!" "I'll show you how to make the jelly, but we need to stop first and get crabapples."  Mama will wear you slap down when you least expect it.  I slowed down and the trees were still there, each branch loaded with the small fruit, hanging in clusters like little yellow Christmas balls on Charlie Brown's sincere tree.  

 I stopped and got out to scramble up the bluff to shake the trees.  Turning around, there's Mama:  out of the car with a peppermint candy bag, book store bag, and the convenience store bag all in hand, headed toward the little embankment the trees are growing on!  There's no stopping her.  The Vicodin not only made her oblivious to pain, it also created a level of energized euphoria only dreamt of by drug addicts! 

 I kept trying to get her off the bluff but she continued to tell me she felt fine, she was fine, she wasn't putting any weight on her freshly operated-on knee, she just wanted those few more crabapples right over there.  

It takes me a lot of talking to convince Mama of anything, but I finally convinced her to get off the shaved side of the hill and let me shake the trees.  She could pick up the ones on the ground.  

And she did.  Enough of them that my hands became stiff and store from slicing the firm flesh off the core to make the precious jelly with.  Mama really was fine, too.  She didn't take any of the pain medications sent home with her,  preferring her old standard, Bayer Aspirin.  Two days post-surgery she wasn't even taking those.  Her knee healed without any complications and is still fine.

Mama and I giggle a lot about her crabapple picking that day.  We laughed about it yesterday and snickered about it this morning as she was again, half way up the little embankment, picking crabapples...

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Today's post was written exactly a year and a day ago.  I thought of it this morning, as we stopped to pick crab apples by the side of the road coming back from the opthamologist office.   Mama has crab apples, again, to process tonight.  And I get to be Favorite Child again for at least the rest of the day...