I’ve spent the last few weeks talking to AJ on a daily basis, just listening when she needs someone to listen and offering prayers and encouragement along the way. During this time, we’ve cried some and laughed a lot because sometimes you just need to laugh. As Truvy says in Steel Magnolias, “Laughter through tears is one of my favorite emotions.”
And since I shared our sadness yesterday, I thought I’d share some laughter today.
A.J.’s family is financially very comfortable. I mean her daddy is a surgeon and you don’t generally hear people say things like, “Well, you know he’s a doctor and they are just barely making ends meet.” They also tend to have friends that are in the same financial type boat, present blogger excluded.
Watching the last few months unfold has taught me a few things.
1. Apparently, when the upper class are facing tough circumstances, their friends send their maids over to clean the person’s home. Yesterday, AJ said there were no less than 5 maids in her home at one time.
I would have sent Cata, but there aren’t enough Grab its in the free world to give her the supply she would need to clean a house that size.
2. When they send food over, they do it with style. At one point throughout this whole thing, I told AJ that I would really like to bring them a meal and asked what they were completely sick of so that I could avoid it. Her answer?
Beef Tenderloin.
I was thinking more along the lines of receiving too many King Ranch Chicken casseroles made with Velveeta. It’ s not too often that you get to hear someone say, “I am just sick of all this delicious, high quality beef served with garlic infused potatoes and fresh spinach casserole with creme brulee for dessert.”
3. Instead of everyone bringing over their best fried chicken, tomato aspic, or potato salad for the funeral, they hire caterers. I honestly think there will be someone carving prime rib in the corner and an open bar.
AJ and I have laughed about all of this because even though it’s the world she’s grown up in, she’s down to earth enough to find the comedy in all of it.
Last night we were laughing about one lady who brought over some split pea soup in a reused milk jug. My personal opinion is split pea soup isn’t the most visually appealing food even when presented in a delicate, china bowl. AJ said her sister came downstairs, saw the milk jug full of soup sitting on the counter and asked, “Who barfed in the milk jug?”
Needless to say, the split pea soup remained uneaten.
I was over at Gulley’s this morning and I was telling her some of these things. When I told her about the split pea soup, she told me a great story about Nena.
A few years ago, one of Nena’s good friends passed away. Nena’s best friend, Jo, was making some soup to take over to the family’s home, so Nena decided to make some sweet cornbread muffins to accompany the soup.
Nena baked her muffins and wrapped them up to deliver, but saved two of them for she and Granddaddy to eat with their lunch later on. She and Jo drove over and delivered their soup, which I promise y’all was not in an old milk jug because Nena would never allow such unsavoryness, and muffins.
After she got home, she fixed her lunch and took a bite of her cornbread muffin. She said it was the worst tasting thing she’d ever had in her mouth and spit it out. It was so bad she couldn’t even swallow it. She ran into the kitchen to try to figure out what went wrong. And that’s when she saw the error of her ways.
Instead of spraying the muffin tins with Pam cooking spray, she had sprayed them with a can of OFF mosquito repellant.
She told Granddaddy what she had done and he said “You need to call those folks up and let them know that they can’t eat those muffins. It could poison them.”
Nena replied, “You hush your mouth. I’m not about to ruin my reputation in this town and let them know those horrible muffins are mine. If they get sick they can go to the emergency room, that’s what it’s for.”
I’m sure that family was wishing someone had just brought over split pea soup in a milk jug, but on the upside, they probably didn’t have to worry about mosquitos for days after the funeral was over.