Nourishing Feasts

This is a scene written for a class exercise that someday may be part of the Lilac Time story.

When I think about that sad, lost summer, what I remember most often is Aunt Lou in the kitchen, cooking and baking with a ferocity that filled us with awe and a little fear. As she chopped, mashed, sliced, pounded, measured, poured, stirred, and whipped, it was as if she believed there was a secret ingredient somewhere in that kitchen that once found and added to any recipe would magically become a cure not just for mama, so far away in the hospital, but for the three of us—mama’s forlorn and sorrowful children, aching with loneliness at her absence and scared that we might never see her again.

Aunt Lou served us like royalty all summer from breakfast banquets to luncheon feasts and four-course dinners. She was determined to bake and cook her way out of the crisis, insistent that whatever else we might be feeling, whatever else the future held for us, three times a day we would forget our worries and cares, our doubts and insecurities, our loneliness and sadness when we gathered at the table in the kitchen.

Each morning, mounds of fluffy scrambled eggs laced with the green and red confetti of chopped peppers, spicy homemade sausages as big around as firecrackers and just as hot, homemade strawberry jam filled with sweet chunks of berries, and a big basket of homemade biscuits greeted us. The biscuits were the best—we could smell that fresh-baked aroma all the way upstairs—and visions of butter, honey and jam melting and oozing over the sides made us hop out of bed and scramble down the stairs, our mouths already savoring the cavalcade of tastes awaiting us on the table.

She called the biscuits her “jigger” biscuits because she cut them out of the dough using papa’s whiskey shot glass or “jigger.” She said the shot glass was just the right size—about one-and-a-half inches in diameter—and she knew what she was talking about because you could load one of those biscuits up with butter or jam and pop it in your mouth in one bite. You could eat them so fast it was like eating popcorn—grab a handful, pick four or five up at a time, and just munch away.

Aunt Lou hovered over us while we ate, leading us always in the Lord’s Prayer before breakfast, then inspecting our appetites, correcting our manners, searching for clues in our demeanor or talk that might reveal a child in need of some special attention or one with a secret that needed an outlet or, more often, one, more specifically one like me, with plans for the day that might involve more mischief than she was willing to put up with.

For Aunt Lou was a stern disciplinarian. She was a good Christian woman and wore her faith like a shiny yellow rain slicker, bright and impenetrable, glistening with purpose. Her good intentions resounded in the rhythmic stamp of her staunch stride. She didn’t walk, she marched and the steady swinging of her arms testified to the constancy of her conviction.

Religion was her shield, deflecting the wayward arrows of doubt or disbelief. It was also her sword, a weapon slashing at all our considerable sins. Like a native guide hacking through the jungle overgrowth, Aunt Lou carved a path for us to follow that summer, whacking away at our lapses of faith and misbehavior. If the path was sometimes too narrow for our youthful spirits, if her vigilant supervision was often fierce and uncompromising, so much stricter than the gentle ways of our mother, if we were filled more often with fear of Aunt Lou than the love of God, still we knew with unquestionable certainty that her affection for us was deep and her devotion to us unshakeable.

And that infallible knowledge, that sureness that never would she abandon us, never would she waver, provoked our worst behavior. We were holy terrors that summer. Perhaps we needed a way to exercise our fears and worries about our mother, I don’t know. Whatever the reason, we bedeviled, plagued, tested, and tormented Aunt Lou daily. Yet, whatever her frustrations with our tricks and deceits, she met us each morning in the kitchen, dressed in her faith and her apron, and fed us those fat spicy sausages and homemade biscuits along with generous servings of duty, charity, honor, faith, hope, and courage. She nourished not only our bodies but our spirits and kept us from crumbling like over-baked cookies under the weight of worry and sadness that we carried.