You see, how Sunday luncheon is meant to be is, first of all, at Nana’s house, in her dining room which still, magically, fits the whole family, including cousins.
On the menu: two choices are possible here.
- The gigantic five- or six- or seven- rib roast beef, complete with thick layer of fat on top which is dusted heavily with salt and pepper before roasting.
- Fried chicken. No, real fried chicken… a chicken (or two or three or four) has been taken apart, piece by piece, in the kitchen, and breaded and fried in gigantic and ancient cast-iron pans.
Vegetables ensue, especially potatoes mashed by hand and not out of a box mixed with water, which is how your mother thinks they should be done.
Dessert is ice cream in various shapes, Eskimo pies, and ice cream sandwiches and drumsticks. But we do not call it ice cream; we call it “Dark Mystery.” This is from the habitual answer to my (and my cousins’) asking “What’s for dessert?” “It’s a dark mystery.”
“What do you want for dessert, dear?”
“I want some Dark Mystery!”
Summertime Sundays: everyone gathered at Nana’s pool instead. Fried chicken always. Chicken and accompaniments slowly brought down to us in the back of a 1940’s vintage station wagon, a genuine “Woody.”
“Dark Mystery” for dessert still. Running around on hot cement. Daddy teaching me how to swim, and Mom stretched decoratively out on a lounge chair in the sun, with my aunts and older cousins. Nana in the shade of the awning, watching us all and talking with her children and grandchildren.
white pebble 