Lumps and All

The Bowl

A quail called out this morning, loud, from the lone mesquite tree on the southwest corner of our yard. A Gambel’s quail, the same song I’ve listened to since we moved to Arizona. It wouldn’t be home without those birds.

That call, quail use to gather their own. It gathered me back to my childhood, Nogales, Arizona, home, looking out the sliding glass door at the adobe wall.

Red mud packed into bricks, slightly crooked, because the workers had shown up on Saturday still feeling the effects of a Friday night.

The quail walked its uneven top, calling the same call into the morning.

Sundays meant mashed potatoes.
The 1970s green Pyrex mixing bowl, made in the USA, filled with steaming potatoes my mom had just peeled. Milk, butter, salt, pepper, and her hand blender at the ready. She knew exactly when to stop it.

Not too smooth.
The right amount of lumps. Just the way I liked it.

In the next room, my dad had the TV on, some game he was watching without really watching, the Sunday paper spread out around him, comics picked through by us kids, and the Parade section sliding off the couch.

I sat at the counter with the comics, the smell of Sunday dinner already pulling at me before anyone said a word. Little me, watching her hands move like she’d done this a hundred times, because she had.

Then it happened.
Fast food came to Nogales. Kentucky Fried Chicken opened up, then Church’s not long after, but we were already loyal, the whole family, to a bucket.

Some Sundays turned into original recipe, a tub of coleslaw, mashed potatoes on the side. The potatoes that came with it were fine, smooth, made for no one in particular, the same potatoes everybody in town was eating that night.

My mom’s potatoes were made for me. For us. We told her so, every time.
Hers were better, we said, and her gravy too. We meant it.

I buy plenty of things already made. Convenience, they call it.

Lately, I’m leaning more toward getting that green Pyrex bowl out of the deep cupboard and making the fixings for a Sunday meal on any day of the week. The bowl, the same as it ever was. The only thing different is that my mom’s hands aren’t the ones reaching for the blender.