Look Around the Table

Did you forget anything girls? It was Sunday after church in a small Georgia town and we were on the search, but not for lunch. We had found that - a local Sunday buffet where all the church folk gather and if you didn't get out of church before any other convenes, you are destined to wait in a line that stretches out into the parking lot. But it is worth the wait, home-grown veges flavored with fatback or bacon, turkey and dressing, country-fried steak or meatloaf. And then, if you have the time and appetite, all topped off with their famous coconut pie. But, before we leave any table, Mama ALWAYS asks, did you leave anything, girls? Not on our plates, that's for sute. Mama means did you leave your purse, your cell phone, your jacket, your sweater, your camera . . . she rattled off the lost. For after 60 odd years of checking behind her four children and all of their friends, someone ALWAYS leaves something at the table, on the back of a chair or underneath the table. We all looked at her absent-mindedly, not recalling anything left behind to necessitate the hurrying and scurrying to run back in. THIS time, though, it was MAMA who forgot something. That morning a unusual cold spell for April blew through this town and along with it, an unseasonable cold and chilly wet rain. Thus, Mama had ventured out to church and to the local Sunday buffet with her umbrella in tow. As we headed into the parking lot weaving through dozens of hungry church people, she looked at me in dismay and said, "I forgot my umbrella!" Never fear, Mama, I will go against the stream, and fight my way back in to the crowded lobby and pick my way through the people waiting back to the table that a few moments before had been "ours." As I headed upstream, the waitress met me in the doorway with the treasured lost item with a flourish known only to Southern waitresses, and I triumphantly held it up for Mama to see. Red and blushing, she said, "I was so worried about all of you, and I am the one who should have looked around the table." That's okay, Mama, you're entitled, after four kids and sixty years, who wouldn't forget something?