Mom loves to tell stories. With the right question, she can talk for a long time. It doesn’t always make sense, but she’s animated and excited and sometimes sings right in the middle of her story. Today I asked her about Christmas memories and here’s the story she told:
(Punctuation is difficult to discern with Mom because her sentences roll into each other. This is the best job I could do to translate it into text.)
I remember when I was young, really young, and I though anything that was worth anything was too expensive. I told myself, “Don’t you dare just want something.”
I was tired of the kids wanting this or that. I couldn’t stand it. I decided what we needed to do was to do a good job. I didn’t want to disappoint them.
Listen to what the birds have to sing: (singing) Dum, dum… Birds are beautiful, birds are beautiful and I wanted birds that had been in the shell a long time. I told the kids that I wished they would just talk about the beautiful birds. It’s time for bird’s time.
My daddy said, “In that case, let’s have bird soup.” I said, “Do you have bird soup. Let’s call them in. That will be a good time for them and a good time for me. The bird soup would be so good.”
They said, “oh yes,” and they threw out their arms. That would be so much fun. I said, “Ok, I’ll do the cooking and that will be lots of fun.”
And my mother turned around and said, “Bird soup. That’s what we’re going to have.”
Yes, we can do that!
And I said “Bird soup for breakfast and 21 bird soup biscuits.” And I said here we go, here we go.
Those kids jumped up and down and they thought that was about the best thing that could happen.
I said (singing), Okaaaaaaaay. And they said “Okaaaaaay. And we can have it because it’s right here in our back yard. Ok. We’ll do that.”
But you know, soup is one thing that’s good for everybody. Everyone gets so tickled and excited about it. So I suggest if you don’t have anything else to do, make bird soup.
There you go. Bird soup is for Christmas. We were sitting in the front room in the sunshine watching the birds which must have started part of the story. We had also talked about having a soup and sandwich simple meal at lunch tomorrow on Christmas Day. Somewhere in her mind those two ideas did a mash-up and this story was the result. I’ll bet your family stories aren’t as interesting as that!
(P.S. In 1953, Mom and Dad spent a week in Hong Kong at the Peninsula Hotel for their honeymoon. They had bird nest soup as a first course at the hotel restaurant. Look it up if you have the stomach for it. Dad said it was pretty good. Of course, at that point in his life, he would try most anything!)
Wherever you go, whatever you do, cherish each memory you are making. Write down your family stories. Life is too short and changes too quickly; this may be your last chance.
