Essat 6

Jeff Hurn

Mom's Perfect Mixture

Rodman passes in the ball to Pippen. Five….. Four…. Pippen passes the ball to Jordan. Three…. Two…. Jordan fakes the shot and dribbles past the defender. One…. Jordan shoots the fade away from the three point line. EEEEEERRRGGGHH. The buzzer sounds just as the ball rolls off the tips of my fingers. The ball rolls around the old, bent, and rusty rim for an eternity before it eventually descends through the net. Whoooo!!! Bulls Win!!

About the time that I start celebrating the game winning shot of Game 7 of the NBA championship game that I had just made, my mom slings the side door open and calls me in for supper. “JEFFREY, the food is about ready!” I pick-up my old worn out basketball off of the naked spot in my yard. There is not a lot of grass around my basketball goal because the ground was worn out from the many imaginary championship games played there.

It is another typical hot, humid north Alabama summer day. Sweat pours from my smaller eleven year old frame like water rushing over a windshield covered with rain-x during a rain storm. The temperature is probably around 92 degrees but it feels like 110 degrees. I walk in through the side door of my house and my father greets me with, “So did Jordan make the game winning shot for the Bulls today?” I chuckle a little bit, nod my head, and reply, “of course I made the shot.” My mother forces me to get a quick shower before supper because I am covered with a gross mixture of grass, dirt, and sweat. After my five minute shower, I meet my family at the dinner table just in time to hear my father ask the blessing.

After the highly anticipated “Amen”, my mother did one of my favorite things that she does for me. She fills my glass half-full of ice from the ice trays in our freezer that I had filled with water earlier that day. Then she did it; the most amazing thing she could have done for me after a hot summer day. She grabbed the gallon pitcher of her home made sweet tea and started pouring it into my glass of ice. The golden brown sugar filled tea rolled over the ice like water in a stream rolls over and through the rocks on the bottom. As soon as the tea hit the ice filled glass, steam rushed out of my glass. It was the most pleasing fog my eyes have ever seen. She hands me the angelic thirst quencher and I quickly devour two gulps. The chilling ice cold tea goes down into my esophagus and into every vein in my body refreshing my hot worn out figure from the hot summer day. I did not know as a child how much my mother's sweet tea meant to me.

Everyone has some type of meal, dessert, or drink that means something to them. These special recipes represent their family or heritage. They can be anything from "grandma's apple pie", to "Uncle Pete's Belgium waffles." These are the servings that even when you are not hungry or thirsty you can still make room for them. Mine happens to be my mother's sweet tea. I did not realize how important her sweet tea is to me until a pregame dinner during my senior year in high school. It was like an epiphany to me.

Around forty starving and thirsty teenage boys were gathered together for a weekly pregame meal that our parents have prepared. I was near the front of the line because seniors have seniority over the underclassmen. I picked-up my paper plate, a napkin, fork, and steak knife. The first thing on the buffet was grilled t-bone steaks. At this point I was glad that I was in front of the offensive linemen so I was sure of getting a steak. Next in line to go on my plate was a smoldering hot baked potato wrapped in a heat blanket of aluminum foil. To make sure I got the full effect of a baked potato, I grabbed some butter and sour cream. Last in the buffet style line were the desserts. There was anything from brownies to cupcakes. I am not a big fan of sweet stuff but just for good measure I grabbed a cupcake that had “Go Bears” written in purple icing. Some of my teammates had a seat saved for me so I went and placed my plate of food down at our table. It was now time for me to get something to drink. Each parent brought a different drink. We had a large variety to choose from. We had the dark caffeinated drinks such as Coke, Pepsi, and Dr. Pepper. Then we had the light caffeinated drinks such as Mt. Dew, Sprite, and Sierra Mist. Then there were a couple parents who had brought diet drinks or tea. We had two coolers of sweet tea: one my mother had made, and one from some lady who had apparently never made sweet tea before. I grabbed a Styrofoam cup and filled my cup with tea from the first cooler. Well, it was supposed to be tea. It tasted nothing like the tea that my mother makes and to be honest it was disgusting. It tasted like it had been made with seven tea bags and a half a cup of sugar. Needless to say, I poured the nasty tea out because obviously I did not get it from my mother’s cooler. My mother makes a gallon of Louisiana tea by boiling one tea bag for about ten minutes, and then adding one and a half cups of sugar; the perfect mixture. I refilled my cup with my mother’s tea and finally sat down to eat.

After graduating high school and moving away from home, I do not have the opportunity to have my mom’s tea anytime I want. Moving to a large city was a big change for me coming from one of the smallest communities in Alabama to one of the largest. I have been in Tuscaloosa for about a month and have already eaten more varieties of food than I ever have back home. There are so many great places to eat down here. None of these places have sweet tea that is even worthy of being at the same table as my mom’s tea. The tea down here is either too sweet or not sweet enough. The one thing I miss the most is my mother’s tea. I plan on going home for the weekend back to my hometown of LA (Lexington, AL). My mother called a couple days ago and asked what I wanted for supper Saturday night. I told her that it did not matter what she cooked as long as she had some sweet tea made. My mother's recipe will stay in my family even when she is gone. My wife will learn how to mix up that Louisiana sweet tea with one tea bag and one and a half cups of sugar.