Bringing Home an Empty Dish

Several years ago I decided to start this blog because I noticed that I had a lot of stories, lessons, and spiritual awakenings that over my short life were rattling around inside my head and probably needed to be put down on paper.  Not as much for others to read, but really just for me–so that I would always remember.   I came up with the title, Chronicles of a Mini Pearl, because who else lives in a family with its own women’s social group–I mean legit social group–the “Sugarflat Pearls” have bylaws and even officers to carry them out.  I think I just elected myself as the Sugarflat Pearls Chronicler to do just what that title suggests–I wanted to be the person who wrote the accounts of the most important historical, Sugarflat events.

A historical event happened this week.

Shortly after leaving home for college, I quickly found out that not all families were like mine.  In fact, none were like mine.  Not to toot our own horn—but more families should be.  Television shows depict families torn apart or family gatherings as a place where you bicker and dredge up old grudges.  Not in mine.  Our family gatherings are for laughing at the retelling of old mishaps or the many escapades that have occurred over the years on A.B. Jacks Road.  Our family gatherings are spontaneous—as soon as the first flakes of snow fall–word travels that the soup is on and the sledding hill is open for business. Our family gatherings are for eating.  Our family gatherings are for games like Family Feud, and Scattergories, and MadGab. Games played together with both young and old participating.  Games that always, always end in a tie.  I think I started this blog because I wanted to give just a glimpse, to those less fortunate than I, of what it is like to be a part of such a family that extends so much farther than the land on the outskirts of Clinton and Laurens known to all of us as Sugarflat.  

On Wednesday of this week, around four o’clock in the afternoon, Almeda Jacks Rogers, most affectionately known to most of my family as MeMa, died.  Remember, my job is to write about important events.  Most reading this, probably didn’t know her or maybe only knew her through relatives of relatives.  But even if you didn’t know her, please don’t stop reading.

MeMa was the matriarch of the Sugarflat Pearls, the matriarch of the Jacks family, the oldest daughter to Ma Polly and Daddy B.  She was 99 when she took her last breath and when mama let me know she was gone–I cried.  I cried for me, not for her.  I cried because when I said all of those things about family gatherings, and games, and fun, and laughter, and spontaneity, and food, MeMa was at the heart and most often the mastermind of them all.  

MeMa graduated from college when most women never attended.  She married and when her husband was away at war, storming the beaches of Normandy, she was keeping the home fires burning.  She went back to school again to become a teacher while raising a large family.  She could cook like none other–Chess Pie, Peanut Brittle, German Chocolate Cake, casseroles, vegetables, and anything else that is fried in a pan or is baked in an oven.  She wasn’t my grandmama–but yet she let me and all my other cousins think she was.   She loved us just like she loved her own.  She made me a plate full of individual heart shaped cakes on Valentine’s Day even though I was the only one living in my house.  She would make me a jar of peach preserve juice–yes that’s right–just the sugary syrup that the fruit and sugary mixture leave behind because that’s the way I liked it.  She did that–just for me.  

I wouldn’t be a good chronicler if I didn’t write something to leave on this world about my MeMa– not for her or my family–because she leaves behind a beautiful group of children and grandchildren, and great grandchildren, and so on and so on that will carry her legacy of love of family .  . . forever.

I write this for you.

I write this for you, the person reading this who is alone or in a dispute with your own family.  I write this for you, the person who didn’t have the chance to know your grandparents or maybe your grandparents just weren’t good.  I write this for you, to tell you in MeMa’s honor, to either fix what is broken with your own family, or to break the cycle of the broken family from whence you came. Start fresh if you have to.  Create a family like MeMa did, be a parent and grandparent to your own children and grandchildren and even children not yours like MeMa was.  Decide today that you are going to create a family like mine–we aren’t perfect, we have dysfunction too, we have arguments–but we still love each other.  That’s the legacy MeMa left–love–despite it all.   

MeMa loved every member of her family.  She loved us so much she often would cry just thinking about the ones of us who were gone or the ones that left us too soon.  Now, MeMa, we cry because you’re gone.  But, Mema, you leviathan Pearl, you left your mark, and the ones of us who had the pleasure of knowing you will carry your love for family, and for fun, and for laughter, and for food until we see you again.  Due to Covid-19, we won’t celebrate your life like normal.  There will be food, and laughter, and stories, and fun, but we probably won’t hug and kiss.  We will be masked up and socially distanced.  But this I know, love can travel way farther than the 6 feet or heavenly distance between us.

After a church fellowship supper, as I was throwing the remains of what I had brought into the woods behind my church, I told my mama that my goal was to figure out how to make a dish as good as Mema.  Mama asked what I meant by that, and I told her that MeMa always takes an empty dish home.

Family gatherings look differently these days, but as MeMa would tell you, these days will pass.  

What dish are you making for your next family gathering? 

Try to make something so good you bring an empty dish home–for your family, for yourself, and, of course, for MeMa.