My mom is not my best friend. While we enjoyed watching Gilmore Girls together, we never achieved Rory and Lorelai status. Our relationship is for sure that of mother/daughter. She listens, gives advice, hurts when I hurt, and also gives tough love. While that is similar to the relationship I have with my best friend, the difference is that she is still the parent. We don’t tell each other everything like the Gilmore Girls. There are boundaries established due to emotional walls and levels of comfort, societal standards (she parents me; I don’t parent her), and physical distance. But my mom is always there when I need her.
When I left Oklahoma in 2012 I was part way running from and part way running to. My first year teaching in South Carolina and living more than 2.5 hours away from home for the first time was exciting and overwhelming in ways I did not anticipate. Throughout the year I experienced culture shock; teaching-related anxiety, frustration, and fear; health scares; and joy and heartbreak. And in February 2013 I was feeling a lot of those. I had invited my parents to visit me for Presidents’ Day weekend; however, a few weeks earlier, they told me they weren’t going to make it. Desperate times called for desperate measures. After a friend break-up in January that made me question if I wanted to stay in the state and move to Charleston to teach, which was always the plan after being in a smaller town, I pulled a Rory and laid everything out to my mom. (This was in writing, of course, I couldn’t tell her these things over the phone - ridiculous! 😅) So, in true Lorelai-fashion à la Carole King, I needed her, and she followed me.
Thankfully when I picked her up from the airport, we didn’t rehash everything in person. Knowing was enough. There were some things said (being told she just had to “get over it” when she had her own breakup wasn’t advice I was ready to hear at the time), but the thing most impactful was that she was there. I am definitely a quality-time person. I don’t think I knew about the five love languages at this point in my life, or if I did, I wasn’t relating them to relationships well. Now, looking back at relationships through the years, things make more sense in that context. I (maybe all people) need and enjoy all of them in different amounts, at different times, from different people. But quality time is what I receive the best/ need the most. And by flying halfway across the country to spend Presidents’ Day weekend with (the one extra day off between Christmas and Spring Break), that is what she gave me.
Mom and I stayed in someone’s home listed on Airbnb in Mount Pleasant, so we were in a good central location. Charleston is made up of six districts and suburbs that all run into one another. While Mount Pleasant is its own town, it was just as easy to get it confused with James Island or Daniel Island, which are districts of Charleston.
Isle of Palms and Sullivan’s Island, both areas near Mount Pleasant that I frequented when I wanted to run or walk on a beach, were separate towns. During my year living in Barnwell, I visited Charleston pretty frequently, and when I lived in North Charleston for two years, I got to know the area even better. There are lots of things I don’t miss about South Carolina (bugs, humidity, and hurricanes, to name a few), but there are several good things that I do miss, too (the culture including history and food; the proximity to the beach; and the architecture and neighborhoods, to name a few of those). That first year away from home I felt alone and lonely a lot of times, but I also gained a lot of independence. Learning how to navigate the Charleston metro area (my first five months without a GPS, too!) was a big accomplishment for me. If I were to go back now I would surely still get lost (something I spent a lot of time doing - aimlessly driving or trying to follow Mapquest directions), but in a lot of ways it would feel like coming home.
When my mom visited, a main item on my “to-do” list was to drive around to some of the schools and neighborhoods I was researching as potential teaching locations for the following year. Since I lived two hours away, when I visited, I mainly did touristy things without bothering to see neighborhoods that much. It was a few months later that I took a day off work to go to a teaching job fair at a Charleston metro school district, but it was nice to have seen some of the schools where I would later interview. (Spoiler - I did get offered a job from an interview at that job fair. I spent my next two years in South Carolina teaching in Goose Creek at a middle school on the Naval Weapons Station, Joint Base Charleston.)
Over Presidents Day weekend I was able to show Mom the city I had come to know the past few months. It’s always more fun to be a tourist when someone else is with me. On Saturday we visited the museum that housed the Hunley, the first successful combat submarine launched during the Civil War. Scientists have restored more of the vessel since we visited and saw it in the 75,000-gallon preservation tank after getting lost at sea for over 100 years. As basic as it was, it was amazing to me that submarine technology was first developed in the 1800s. Mom and I wandered downtown and saw the Charleston Southeastern Wildlife Exposition and an unexpected parade down Market Street with Citadel cadets, assuming for Presidents’ Day. We toured the Alston-Edmonton House, one of many historic homes in downtown Charleston. (We’re pictured outside the porch of the house sitting on a Charleston Joggling Board.)
And we ate at Poe’s Tavern on Sullivan’s Island, a place I had seen many times but never wanted to eat there alone. The restaurant’s moody gothic atmosphere and raven decor capitalized on Edgar Allan Poe’s history with the island. He was stationed there as a private in the U.S. Army in 1827 and 1828. (More about Poe’s time in the south can be read here.)
Mom and I spent our last day at Patriot's Point Naval and Maritime Museum where we toured the USS Yorktown, a US aircraft carrier built during WWII. Before I moved to the area I watched videos of the city as research, and the Arthur Ravenel Jr. Bridge (or the Cooper River Bridge), which overlooks the Yorktown sitting in the Charleston Harbor was always a prominent landmark. The Mount Pleasant Memorial Waterfront Park under the bridge was the first place I tried to capture a Charleston sunrise, and I had walked across the bridge many times. Even though I had seen the ship from a distance, I hadn’t explored it yet, so I was excited to do so when Mom was in town. It was quite a contrast to see both the Hunley, which was almost 40’ in length and the Yorktown which has an overall length of 872’ at the time of build, then 888’ when it was remodeled in 1956.
After extensive service in the Pacific during WWII, she was modernized as an attack aircraft carrier (CVA) in the 1950s. Then in 1957 Yorktown was re-designated as an anti-submarine aircraft carrier (CVS) and served in Vietnam. Before the ship was decommissioned in 1970, she recovered astronauts and the capsule from the Apollo 8 mission in 1968 (USS Yorktown, CV-10). I easily get lost with names and dates, so history was not my favorite subject. However, I do enjoy learning about history first-hand. It was easy to imagine life on the ship when we walked through the metal doorways and saw the bunk rooms and bridge or walked around the hangar and flight deck. The flight deck was cold in February, but the sun was bright, and the experience was eye-opening. I cannot trace my relatives to anyone that served on an aircraft carrier, but military service is part of all of our histories. Any time I’m confronted with a piece of history like that I’m grateful for what others went through in the past, and what others go through currently, so I can choose to do something else with my life.
The weekend with my mom was refreshing. I was able to take my mind of my current circumstances for a while. Later that spring I would have more challenges with school, an echocardiogram because my doctor *thought* she heard something in my heart, and I’d see multiple doctors to finally get a diagnosis of Raynaud’s. (My fingers swelled so much I could barely hold my dry-erase markers, and my students kept asking what was wrong with me. 😒 It wasn’t rheumatoid arthritis, though, so that was something positive.) Even though I chose to live multiple states away, I appreciated that my mom was a phone call, and a plane ride or two, away.
Later that year in March when I was missing my mom, I was also experiencing severe Raynaud’s symptoms and couldn’t hold a knife to cut veggies well. Instead, I used my food processor to shred carrots and celery for this buffalo chicken lasagna that had flavors that reminded me of her. (One of my mom’s favorite things to eat is buffalo chicken wings.) Ken has his own buffalo chicken recipe. In February of this year I made his Creamy Buffalo Chicken, Tomato, and Corn Pie one weekend I visited my parents. We all loved its complex flavors and textures with the fruit and veggies, chicken, three kinds of cheese, spicy buffalo sauce, and cracker-crumb topping. I have included the recipe below for you to try at home. Also, I hope you have a Lorelai, or someone similar, with whom you can spend some quality time and enjoy their favorite food.
Creamy Buffalo Chicken, Tomato, and Corn Pie
Yield: 8 servings
Ingredients:
Good Basic Pie Dough (recipe here)
2 cups corn kernels, fresh or frozen
2 medium-size ripe tomatoes
4 ounces cream cheese, well softened
1 cup crumbled blue cheese
⅔ cup mayonnaise
½ cup minced red onion
⅓ cup buffalo wing sauce
1 tablespoon ranch seasoning mix (the powdered kind, in a packet)
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 cup grated sharp cheddar cheese
2 cups finely chopped cooked chicken
Salt and freshly ground black pepper
1 cup fine plain cracker crumbs
2 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
Directions:
Prepare the pie dough, and refrigerate it for at least 1½ to 2 hours before rolling.
On a sheet of lightly floured waxed paper, roll the dough into a 13-inch circle. Invert the pastry over a 9- or 9½-inch deep-dish pie pan, center it, and peel off the paper. Gently tuck the pastry into the pan without stretching it. Sculpt the overhanging dough into an upstanding ridge; flute the edges, if desired. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour, or place in the freezer for 30 minutes.
Preheat the oven to 400°F (200°C). Bring a small saucepan of salted water to a boil. Add the corn kernels and boil for 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and drain. Core the tomatoes and slice them thinly. (Don’t seed them; you’ll need the moisture for this pie.)
Combine the cream cheese, blue cheese, mayonnaise, onion, buffalo wing sauce, ranch seasoning, and garlic in a bowl. Stir well.
To assemble the pie, sprinkle all the cheddar over the bottom of the pie crust. Cover with half of the chicken, half of the corn, and half of the tomato slices, and salt and pepper the tomatoes lightly. Spread half of the creamy mixture over the tomatoes. Repeat the layering one more time - chicken, corn, and tomato slices - and finish with the remaining creamy mixture.
Bake the pie for 35 minutes. While the pie bakes, put the cracker crumbs in a small bowl. Add the butter and rub them together thoroughly.
After 35 minutes, reduce the heat to 375°F (190°C). Slide out the pie and spread the cracker crumbs evenly over the top. Bake for another 20 to 25 minutes, covering the pie with aluminum foil if the crumbs start to become too brown. When the pie is done, you should be able to see the creamy pie juices bubbling up here and there through the crumbs. Transfer the pie to a cooling rack and cool for 20 to 30 minutes before slicing. Refrigerate leftovers. Reheat leftover slices right in the pan, in a 300°F (150°C) oven, for about 15 minutes.
The Harvest Baker (c) by Ken Haedrich, recipe excerpted with permission from Storey Publishing.
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