When you are in the country, things are done just a little different than we do in the city.  Living in the city, my pops would give each of the kids some money, then we would go to the local shopping center and by mom a gift.  Now needless to say, all of the little knick knacks that we bought she loved.  She did not need them, but it was the thought that counted.  It was really and truly more stuff for us to dust.  When I go to my mom's house today, I can look in the corners at some of her shelves, and believe it or not she still has some of those knick knacks, all that we did not break as children.  Well down South, it was just an excuse to eat! Boy did we ever eat.  Grandpa would kill a hog, the farm hands would dig a pit, grandma and the church ladies would gather in the kitchen and cook, lord did they ever cook.  Potato Salad, Collard greens, picked from grandma's little garden, turnip greens, sweet potato pie, and then just backed sweet potatoes, corn on the cob, and homemade cream corn, fresh tomatoes, cornbread, hot biscuits, homemade butter to go on those biscuits, and cakes for days.  Boy I get hungry just thinking about those times.  My parents would go and buy grandma, a super nice gift and it was from all of us.  Usually it was a Sunday go Meeting suit.  She always loved that, she knew that she would be the best looking woman in church that Sunday.  No one would have a suit like hers, because it came from her daughter's family, and they did not buy no mess!  She was as proud as her rooster strutting on Mother's Day, and it made my grandpa's smile spread from ear to ear, to see his wife so happy.  All I wanted to do was to get into one of those cakes and eat until I could eat no more!  But as you know I had to eat my vegetables first, and then and only then could I have just one huge slice of one cake.  But it was topped with homemade ice cream, which the grandchildren helped to make, because we all took turns turning the churn, boy was that fun.  Well after church everybody gathered at grandmas and the festivities began. Grandma would take off her jacket to her new suit, put on an apron, and got busy.  Now picture this...about four handmade picnic tables, and twenty chairs, four long table borrowed from the local funeral home to hold the food.  About thirty grown ups and children standing around.  The farmhands are slicing the pig and are putting it into huge serving trays, which they had better not break, because it is grandma's good china.  Grandpa blesses the food, and we eat.  I want to wish every Mother or Mother to be, or Mother in training, oh just every lady, a WONDERFUL MOTHER'S DAY!

Sherry/smomdukes