Read Online Chicken Soup for the African American Woman's Soul by Jack Canfield - Free Book Online Page B

having to pick and clean the ton of greens in my refrigerator once I got home from work.
    Then the phone on my desk rang, and it was Mama. “I think I’ll spend the night with you,” she said. “Will you come and get me?”
    Hallelujah! In answer to my unspoken prayer, there was Mama in my kitchen that evening, cleaning all those greens and assisting me in every way needed to make our dinner a five-star success. This included helping me master her special technique for tucking the turkey’s wings in back so they wouldn’t brown too much before the bird was fully cooked.
    While we worked together in the kitchen that Thanksgiving and each one after that, I played Mama’s favorite music on the stereo in the adjacent dining room. We listened to folks she loved, like B.B. King, Bobby Blue Bland, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Jerry Butler, Dinah Washington and Sam Cooke as we cooked. Every now and then, true to Mama’s tradition, we would take a break and dance around the kitchen for a while.
    When Mama passed on three days after her birthday in May 1990, I wondered and worried most about how I would get through Thanksgiving that year without her. I arrived home one evening in October to find a letter from my niece Leah, who had moved to Georgia. “I am inviting you to come to Atlanta for Thanksgiving,” she wrote.
    â€œYour daughters are welcome to come, too,” Leah added.
    I immediately accepted her invitation—another unspoken answered prayer.
    At the time, both of my daughterswere away in college— Jacqueline in California and her younger sister, Nikki, in Massachusetts. We decided that, as usual due to the distance and cost, Jacqueline would spend Thanksgiving with friends on the West Coast and come home for Christmas.
    Nikki, however, was away from home for the first time, and we decided she would meet me in Atlanta to celebrate the holiday with Leah and her family.
    Nikki and I arrived on Thanksgiving eve to find that Leah had already done much of the preliminary work— including picking and cleaning the greens. The next morning we got up early, as customary, and started cooking.
    Leah turned on a radio station that played the dusties— rhythm and blues classics that I had enjoyed all my life.
    We were having a wonderful holiday party—cooking, talking, laughing, and yes, taking dance breaks from time to time. I was doing just fine until we came to the part where I needed to show Leah and Nikki how to tuck the turkey’s wings in back, just like Mama showed me. Suddenly, a tidal wave of sadness engulfed me, and I felt for a moment like Ray Charles, about to drown in my own tears.
    Because I did not want to upset the others, I turned my back and walked over to the open kitchen door leading to Leah’s large backyard. I looked at the bright sunlight filtering mystically through the tall Georgia pines and, in a flash, realized that death is not the end.
    With that, I returned to our celebration of cooking and music. On the radio, “Mashed Potato Time” by Dee Dee Sharp was playing, and we launched into the dance associated with that early 1960s hit. Then the idea came. We would write a dance-and-cook book, including a song for every recipe. We would call it Dancing in the Kitchen . When Jacqueline called from California later in the day, we shared this idea with her. She was equally enthusiastic and started coming up with additional dishes, songs and dances to include.
    Over the years since then, we have come back to this project time and again. For our family recipe for black-eyed peas, the song is “Pass the Peas” by James Brown. For our special party punch, it’s “You Beat Me to the Punch” by Mary Wells. Fried chicken, “Do the Funky Chicken” by Rufus Thomas, of course. And to start off the dessert section, what else but “How Sweet It Is” by Marvin Gaye?
    Whenever we take the time from our busy schedules