Love in Disguise

It happened again some time later with another friend.  I began to notice a strange pattern emerging.  The earth didn’t tremble, nor did a thunderous voice speak, but I had a revelation just the same.  Every single person I asked responded without a moment’s hesitation and without blinking an eye:  their mother’s fried chicken was indeed the best.  To a person, they each stated it as if it were a well-known, indisputable, scientific fact.  I felt I was moving into sacred territory where no one had dared to tread before.  Dare I question a belief so revered—the pride and love a child has for his own mother’s fried chicken? 

I crossed into my teens, and boys became my primary interest.  The revelation I had had long ago at the childish age of twelve wasn’t really important any more.  I just went through years of joyfully eating my mother’s fried chicken whenever it was offered. 

To taste it was to love it.  Its crust was the thickest–yet lightest–and crunchiest I have ever eaten.  It was cooked to perfection every time.  Anything served with it tasted wonderful.  It melted in my mouth and nourished my soul.  In my book, to have a friend over for a fried chicken supper was to extend the ultimate invitation. 

Looking back now, I realize it was also the ultimate gift from my mother. A special dish prepared in someone’s kitchen has no equivalent.  Time is set aside, loving hands perform the labor, magic is tossed in, and the finished creation is placed before you as a gift needing no elaborate paper or bow. 

The years raced by, and I was grown and married.  When I tried my hand at frying chicken, I felt betrayed by my own mother.  My chicken was a failure, yet she had made it look so easy!  My husband chose that moment to tell me his mother’s fried chicken was the best.  Oh, really?  I said.  I never tried it again. 

I approached midlife examining and questioning things which before had never bothered me.  I asked myself questions that ranged from a little silly to very ridiculous and even threw in a few serious ones.  Does God grade sins on a scale of 1 to 10—what’s 1 and what’s 10?  Will I still think young when I’m old?  Will I leave this life never having learned to fry chicken and have someone say mine was the best?  

I began to talk with my now grown-up friends about the sacred subject of Mother’s Fried Chicken once again.  That eerie feeling of déjà vu rushed over me as their words echoed my thoughts:  I never learned to fry chicken like my mother’s.  For a moment, I became amused at the thought of some Margaret Mead personality doing an in-depth study on what could perhaps be evolving as a pattern throughout society—“Is Fried Chicken a Dying Art?” 

I wondered if my fleeting feelings of inadequacy could stem from my long-ago failed attempt at frying chicken.  Just as “Real Men Don’t Eat Quiche,” I knew deep down that “Real Women Can Fry Chicken.”  It didn’t help that I was born in the Deep South, land of “Gone with the Wind,” the Civil War, and home of fried chicken. 

I refused to believe that home-cooked Southern fried chicken is a dying art.  It has too many reasons to live.  No fried chicken? No picnics.  It has also been decreed that there always be five or six different versions of it at any church dinner.  Last, but not least, future generations must experience the joy of it. 

I’ll wager that if I really tried again, I could learn from my mother how to fry chicken like hers.  I could probably place it before my children and see the same delight in their eyes and have them tell me mine is the best. 

Does this mean then that I do not believe any more that my own mother’s fried chicken stands unparalleled?  No.  In my eyes, my fried chicken couldn’t begin to equal my mother’s.  Her magic would be the lacking ingredient. 

In my curiosity about “The Magic of a Mother’s Fried Chicken,” I have learned many things.  Our mothers’ fried chicken is only a tangible manifestation of their love for us, their children.  Our adoration and praise of it as the best is actually our feeble attempt at placing our mothers on the pedestal where they deserve to be.  We must learn to recognize demonstrations of love, however they may be disguised.   I know now that her fried chicken caressed me just as much as her arms ever have. 

What more beautiful work of art can we behold than the essence of a mother’s love and her child’s appreciation of it? 

But, I leave you with one parting thought.  My mother’s fried chicken is the best.  It always was, it still is, and always shall be.  Amen. 

This article was written for Mother’s Day 1987.

Mama’s fried chicken graced our table for seven more years.