Friday, May 28, 2010

Can't Buy Me Love (part 7 - by Margaret Ullrich)

    Aunt Liz must have decided to ignore Aunt Demi's question and her furious crocheting, along with Barbara's and my looks of confusion.  Aunt Liz just sat back and smiled.  She was reassured by Ma's announcement that we took part in the great American tradition of Mother's Day.  

    I guess Aunt Liz was hoping that maybe, aside from the overuse of garlic, just maybe Maltese weren’t really that different.  Maybe she hadn't gotten in over her head when she had thrown caution to the winds and married Ma's brother Charlie.  Maybe there was hope that when she had children, her own Mother's Days were going to be celebrated in the good old American way.


    Sure, why not.  There was talk of men going to the moon, too.


    Aunt Liz jumped into helping Barbara and me improve our traditional Mother's Day brunch menu.  “Breakfast in bed is always a nice start.  Bacon and eggs with orange juice and coffee.  Barbara, you're such a big girl.  I'm sure you and your Pop can manage that.  Tina, I have a nice pancake recipe.  It has sliced bananas in it.  Won't that be fun to make?”
  
    We beamed.  Barbara nudged me.  Some fried eggs and bacon, pancakes, orange juice and coffee.  Sure, we could manage that.  


    Ma wasn't so sure that we could handle pouring the juice, even with Pop's help.  She usually chased everybody, including Pop, out of the kitchen.  But now she was stuck with allowing us to make her a special Mother's Day breakfast.  She couldn’t do a thing to stop us.  She couldn’t even yell at us for making a mess.  

    We were talking about staging an official American Mother’s Day.  Ma was stuck with us being nice to her.  Letting us take over the kitchen on Mother's Day was like a new law.  Well, Ma had picked up a few tricks during her years in America.  Laws didn't worry her.


    Every law had a loophole, right?

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