My Mother is an Iceberg

Recently one Saturday morning I went out the front door to pick up the morning newspaper and noticed someone had left us a bag of apples. Now you can’t let a bag of apples go to waste so I figured I’d do a little cooking. I checked my favorite cook book, an old Betty Crocker 1st edition with the spine coming apart and settled on deep dish apple pie.

This is like anything else someone brings you such as a box of oranges at Christmas. You stare at it for awhile and think of decent ways to get rid of it. Last December I put half a box of oranges in the refrigerator and the other half I scattered out back. Dozens of gentle birds descended into my yard----and then began to fight. It turned into a bird Armageddon.

So I’m in the kitchen wearing my grilling apron that has a picture on it of Mickey Mouse holding a spatula. It was a gift to me from my sons bought long ago on a Disney vacation. I finished making my pie crust (yep, I make my own), filled the pan and placed the pie in the oven.

Out of three siblings I was the only one that hatched wanting to cook. As a boy I loved to hunt and brought home rabbits and squirrels. Mother taught me how to fry meat and later to make biscuits and stews. She nourished my love for cooking.

Suddenly I missed my mother like crazy.

So I grabbed the phone and called and got her usual “Hi, how are you!?” and “What a pleasant surprise!” and “Doctors don’t know everything. Keep putting baking soda on it.” I listened to her tell me about the weather (it’s not normal) and the list of all she was cooking for the church’s Homecoming meal. I laughed and quoted scripture about gluttony and lascivious living and told her I could picture her dancing around a golden calf and waving a stick of butter in the air. She sighed and said that she’d always regretted not spanking me more.

Then without skipping a beat she went on about people who had recently died. She named a lady I was not familiar with. Who?

“Oh, she was sweet. She was an administrator for the City. When I graduated high school she offered me the City Clerk position.”

“But momma, you never went to college. How did you know people in city government? You lived on a farm.”

Well, it seems my little mother had been a “brain” in high school and was offered financial assistance to obtain a college degree. Trouble was she fell in love with my father, it was the late 1940’s and he wanted her to stay home.

Why?

Because.

She told me she had always wanted to study law. Even now at 77 years of age she thinks about that decision. For over an hour she told me about the lost dream of having a professional career.

I never knew that about her.

I smiled and imagined-- Momma Esq., of Baptist, Bible & Hudson. She would have made judges sit up straight and felons eat soap.

It occurred to me that people are like icebergs. We see only a small part and we would swear we’ve seen all there is yet there is so much more unseen below the surface. What a delightful surprise to discover a new dimension of someone you love. Those are the things that make life the wonder God intended it should be. I was tempted to take her a pie—as a retainer fee.