Potato Salad

Sometime this morning, a Twitter friend expressed their desire for their Mom's potato salad.

Funny enough, it just so happened that I had been craving some myself for the past week or so. I couldn't even recall when the last time I partook in the delicacy was... until I did, and it all made sense why I'd gone without it for so long.

The last time I can remember eating potato salad was last Easter Sunday.

It always started the same way - every year, like clockwork, Momma would summon me to her bedroom and inform me of her plans to whip up a batch for Easter dinner. Usually, that meant I would be helping her prep the dish the day before, which was kind of the worst.

For starters, Momma often expected several guests to visit and chow down, even though it was usually just her, myself, and occasionally one or two relatives at our dinner table. Despite this, I would still have to peel, slice, and dice an entire 5 lb. bag of potatoes - or possibly more - into a huge pot of cold water, which I assure you is no fun. To this day, I’m genuinely surprised I still have full usage of my fingers from all the spuds I’ve cut up over the years.

After that, I’d carefully carry the heavy pot full of water and potato chunks back to the kitchen where I'd drain the water out, rinse away any excess potato skin bits, drain the pot again, fill it with water again, and then place it into the fridge until she was ready to add the remaining ingredients.

That latter act had become far more difficult for her last year. Due to her illness, she was often tired, and even walking from her bedroom to the kitchen took a lot of energy from her. Nonetheless, she still eventually made her way to our kitchen table to work her magic.

Some boiled eggs here, some celery and onion bits there, a bit of vinegar, some salt and pepper, lots of mayo, her secret ingredient (which I won’t share here) (fine, it's mustard), and some paprika for garnish, and bam! Enough potato salad to feed an army or rather, the two (or possibly three or four) of us for Sunday and occasionally Monday.

Of course, she'd go back for more on Tuesday, but I'd typically have my fill by then.

“Three days of potato salad is enough,” I say.

“You’re wasting food!”, she’d respond.

As with many moments since Momma's passing last September, this year's Easter Sunday feast is now in my hands. Along with taking on her potato salad (albeit a smaller serving of it), I’ll along be cooking pernil (Spanish-style roast pork) for the first time. It had become part of our Easter dinner tradition after Momma borrowed a recipe from a good friend of hers a few years back. Sadly, that friend also met an untimely end not too long after.

That all said, I’m more than sure that my potato salad won't taste as amazing as hers. However, I’m finding lately that when it comes to preparing the big holiday meals or even just the everyday ones, I mostly wish I could show her that I was paying more attention to her in the kitchen than she probably realized. And yes, maybe I'd take some of her criticism along the way (which I'm sure she'd give whether I asked or not).

Holidays like Easter are truly tough without her around, and I find they're getting tougher as they come up on the calendar. Whenever they do, I still half-expect to hear her slippers shuffling back and forth down the hallway outside of my bedroom to everything ready for the “family,” or hear her yell my name every few minutes to get something out of the kitchen cabinet or even worse, cut up more potatoes for that big-ass pot ("there aren't that many people coming over, Momma!").

To this day, there are still moments I close my eyes and can see her sitting at the kitchen table, mixing the potato salad in that aforementioned pot with the charred bottom. I chuckle a bit when I remember how she would slightly rush through the process so she could get back to her room to catch her favorite scene in The Ten Commandments annual rerun on television - the parting of the Red Sea.

Other times, I envision her fast asleep late on Easter evening, getting a well-deserved rest after putting together an amazing meal as only she could. And of course, the clean-up was up to me, which admittedly sucked less than cutting those potatoes, so I suppose I can't complain.

Selfishly, there's a small part of me that wishes that I had some kind of advance notice that our final Easter together would be just that. But I also know that as long as she’s with me, it wasn't final. It was just last Easter Sunday.

And there isn’t a day, minute, or moment that she isn’t with me. Including this Easter Sunday.

Pray for my hands, y’all. I've got some potatoes to deal with.

Happy Easter to those who celebrate.