Monday, May 12, 2008

Mother's Day

started out with a return to church for Pentecost; lovely flowers in red and white on the altar. Not red for Pentecost, but red and white for Mother's Day. I didn't realize this, but you wear a red corsage on the right if your mother is living , but white on the left (over your heart) if your mother has died. I had never heard of this tradition, but did see someone in the pew in front of me wearing a white one.

I did my altar guild duties and was rewarded with some fresh pineapple at coffee hour. (We had a lively altar guild luncheon on Saturday, during which I learned some interesting tidbits about local lore, local notable gossip, and where the best bars around town used to be.)

Then home, where I began to make an incredibly aromatic sauce (using giblets, cracked wings, red wine, carrots, onion, bay leaf, thyme, etc.) for my much-anticipated Mother's Day duck dinner, to be accompanied by sumptuous butternut squash, creamy mashed potatoes, and green beans with a squeeze of lemon.

Or so I thought.

Just as I began the oven heating, the ENTIRE house was sunk into darkness, all machines sighing off. We called the electric company (no idea, ma'am . . .), waited an hour, then went out for Mother's Day pizza. Sigh. And returned to the evening gloaming, still in darkness.

10 comments:

carolyn said...

Pizza sounds good to me especially if I didn't have to cook it! Never heard of this red and white tradition either, here in England many people still consider the red/white combination to be awfully bad luck (red blood on white bandages a leftover from World War I I believe).

dennis said...

Dennis says ... DUCK DINNER!!!! foiled!!! OW!

Dennis read on Ched's blog about pink and white corsages on early mother's days in the usa. Dennis likes carnations, but Duck and Pizza is better!

Bobby D. said...

I got no problem with red carnations though-- as long as they smell strongly of eugenol !! I think any color is Ok. I like the magenta ones. They are thirsty little beasts in the garden--like roses they love water. Last year mine didn't do well--it was the first time I put a lot of mulch around carnations and I don't think they liked it. Every other year they flourished.

hmmm...

Anonymous said...

What an elegant solution: mothers' day pizza (here in Britland mothers' day is held in March, not May).

I hope the computers and other sensitive little electronic beasts survived their sudden switch off.

Anonymous said...

I have been some places where the flowers were traditionally worn and had forgotten this....

Katie Alender said...

I've never heard of the flower tradition. Sorry you didn't get your fancy dinner. But pizza's pretty yummy, so I guess it's not all bad.

mouse (aka kimy) said...

yikes! that was some drastic measures some mother went to get out of making dinner for her family, but sorry that the sabotage affected you dinner plans as well! hope everything 'kept' and ducky didn't have to get ditched!

I never heard about the flower bit either, I wonder if it was started by the same person who says men who wear an earring in one ear means one thing and the other ear means something else (about their sexuality) geez, I'm learning lots about flowers and mothers day this year....from ched's blog I just learned about carnations ...so best have red and white carnations out! eh?

hugs.

Anonymous said...

Oh, that's too bad about the dinner.

Once, my mother, maternal grnadmother and I were going to church together for Mother's Day and we went ut to the garden to cut roses to wear. I wore a red one, my grandmother (whose mother was dead, of course) wore a white one. But my grandmother absolutely insisted that my mother wear a pink rose. She declared that she was "half dead" and it was the most appropriate choice.

Anonymous said...

Unlike everyone else, I am more interested in "...local lore, local notable gossip, and where the best bars around town used to be." Although where the best bars in town are NOW seems more important :-)

Betty Carlson said...

What a sad turn of events! Mother's Day here in France is next weekend. I wonder if anything special will be planned by my family -- likely not -- boo-hoo.