I was not raised in the south. The southern heritage was imposed on me when I moved down here. I have to admit, I have thrived under the southern tutelage, and no greater lesson was learned but that of ‘Memaw Dressing’.
Now see, Memaw wasn’t my Memaw, but somehow she was everyone’s Memaw.
When you walked into her kitchen on Thanksgiving, her home smelled like love, and that’s all she gave. Memaw was the type of grandma that made other grandma’s jealous. She just loved her family, friends, church members and cousins all the same. She was quirky but in a way that made everyone adore her more. But there was one thing that made Memaw, equivaliant of winning a Pulitzer Prize when it came to cooking: Memaw Dressing.
Now I’m not going to lie, a few years ago I received a hand-copied recipe of ‘Memaw Dressing” I looked at it. I compared it to what I watched the woman doing...it didn’t match up. I’m one hundred percent convinced the woman didn’t want to share her recipe because she enjoyed the recognition it got her; but she was also the type of woman that would always say “I hop you can eat it”.
That was just Memaw. She was the epitome of class and every fiber of her being screamed that she was a good grandma. She loved her family. She did everything that she knew how to do in order to insure her family was taken care of, and the best way that she knew how to do that was to cook. And Lord, Ya’ll that woman could cook. The legend of Memaw dressing spread a lot further then to be confined to the realms of East Avenue. She had family from Colorado, Georgia, Florida and many more that would knock on her door hoping that she’d made a dish of her dressing.
But as a river flows, and time moves on, Memaw joined the Lord and this will be my kids first Thanksgiving without Memaw and while that is the most important part, it is also the first holiday without Memaw dressing.
However, there is a new family that got to experience Memaw Dressing this year. They live in Ohio and Lord, Ya’ll they kept calling it ‘stuffing’. Apparently that’s a northern thing and their variety comes in a box. Bottom line, it isn’t dressing. and most definitely not Mewaw dressing.
Now I’m not saying that I recaptured her magic exactly, but I will say that I spent hours watching that woman move around the kitchen. I did take her ‘recipe’ back to my family and they’re going to be a bit mad when I don’t go home to cook it this year, but I’ve also managed to now introduce some very northern people to Memaw Dressing.
Let’s just say that they seemed a bit hesitantant on trying it at first, but at the end of the meal everyone took to-go boxes.
So while I’ll never feel like I cooked it well enough, I now understand what Memaw was saying when she said, “I hope it’s not too dry.”
And that folks, is the legacy.
