You Bring the Potato Salad and I'll Make the Baked Beans

This coming Sunday, our church will celebrate Harvest Day, our annual homecoming, and I'm thinking about these two ladies. That's Mama and Aunt Joyce. Right about now, they would be huddled up over a pot of coffee at my mother's kitchen table, figuring out who's bringing what to the fellowship hall. Aunt Joyce taught me how to make her baked beans, which I still prepare for every summertime gathering. I haven't quite mastered Mama's potato salad—she'll have to give me another lesson, I guess. Mine has a tendency to become mashed potatoes with mayo. I miss seeing Aunt Joyce in our church yard, with her purse dangling off her elbow as she clutched her Bible. I miss the way you could NOT get her to the car after services because she wanted to visit with everybody. I miss the way she wouldn't hesitate to "straighten out" a preacher if she thought he needed it—or tell me what I needed to do to whip the choir into shape. And I sure miss seeing that Pyrex dish with her initials nail-polished to the bottom, completely emptied by fellowshipping Baptists. Now Mama and I plan together. I'll be bringing Publix fried chicken. Somehow, I have a feeling that menu planning with me, as opposed to menu planning with Aunt Joyce, is just not the same:)