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In Mom's Kitchen
Home-Cooked Memories By Greg Downs
"Just fixing dinner," she said, as if this were the typical meal.
That dinner (which Northerners would call lunch) inaugurated a strange and pleasing tradition. Each time I returned home, my mother would invite friends over for Sunday dinner. She spent hours preparing the meals, and it always included several dishes she could not eat. The pork chops were obviously off limits, but she couldn't even touch the green beans because she cooked them in bacon for my benefit. Whenever I offered that I didn't need bacon in my green beans, she always said, "But that's how you like them."
At noon, when my friends arrived, my mother filled every plate with a pork chop and green beans and mashed potatoes and watched us eat. "This is Greg's favorite meal," she would tell my friends. "He flew all the way home just for these pork chops."
"I'd walk home for these," my friends would joke. And I would look from plate to plate as they dug in, trying to figure out why I felt like an outsider in my own home. My memories of my teenage years were being papered over in front of me, and I couldn't figure out why.
I tried several strategies to break my mother of this habit. For a 
while I barely picked at the food she offered, but that didn't slow her down. Sometimes I made counter-suggestions, like fried chicken, but she always replied that I liked pork chops too much to allow her to make anything else.
And still she would embarrass me by telling my friends untrue stories. "Greg's grandmother used to make these pork chops," she would say. "I learned how to make them by watching her."
"My mother eats meat, and she can't cook like this," my friends said.
"Well, I just know it's his favorite," she replied.
These dinners became a holiday ritual not just for me, but for my friends. If I called them at Christmastime, they'd ask what time to come over for pork chops. It was something they mentioned on their postcards. It was something they had in common with my mother, but not with me.
