Mother’s Visit

My 90 year old mother had not seen our new (to us) home since we moved to a different town, so she wanted to make the 18-hour drive to see us and arrived on Monday, March 9, 2020. Luckily, her 82 year old husband and 70-something brother were along to do the driving. My mother makes a great drill sergeant, so she “supervised” the trip.

They arrived the day after my friends left our house for their weekend visit. Most interesting, also, it was when the COVID-19 stories began to surface in a serious way. We went out to eat on the day they arrived, but after that, the university where I work and which was in spring break mode, began to think about what to do with 20-thousand-plus students. Administration decided to extend spring break one week, and then we’d work on turning all of our classes into a virtual format. Suffice it to say that I have been conducting meetings and teaching schedules in a virtual format called, Zoom (c). It’s been an interesting way to do business.

My mother likes to eat, though she eats very little save sweets and starches. The second night of her visit, I fixed grilled chicken and pesto pasta. I’m still using the 30-plus small containers of pesto that I made last summer from a prolific basil plant. The lovely thing is that pesto, when prepared and frozen properly, looks as green and lovely thawing from teh freezer as the day you put it in. I simply seasoned the chicken thighs with seasoned salt and garlic powder, and grilled until it reaches an internal temperature of 165 degrees F (75 degrees Celsius). I cooked the pasta until al dente and tossed it with thawed pesto. I sprinkled it with a little more Parmesan after I served it. We had a added roasted Brussels sprouts and crusty bread and enjoyed it with a sparkling Cava. My mother mostly ate the bread with lots of butter. Last fall, Dale and I took a sparkling wine and Cava tasting class at K-State’s College of Health and Human Sciences’ Hotel and Hospitality department. It was a good lesson.

Last December when I was home, in Western Colorado, I had noticed a perfect wasps’ nest. I showed it to my step-father and told him all about such wasps (Bald-faced hornet, actually) being the best of architects! Low and behold, unknown to me, he had cut it down and presented it to me as a gift. Please understand that these hornets leave the nests in the cold of winter, but to make sure, I stuck it in the freezer for 24 hours. Then it became a decoration. The nest now hangs from my living room ceiling. Look at its beauty! The queen builds this paper nest going round and round. While she builds the walls, she builds the comb, which will hold the workers. It’s perfect, as many things in nature are.

Interestingly, we discovered a yellow jacket nest in our yard. They build underground, and they are perfect until an opossum came along and tore it out. They like to eat the larvae. That’s another story for another time.

Well, it was a great time with mother. I am 63 years old, and she still feels the need to tell me that I’m cooking wrong, cleaning wrong, and she has opinions about my behavior. She did like the variety of birds feeding at my various feeding stations, so that was entertaining. Here’s another thing that makes mother think that perhaps I was switched at birth with her “real” daughter, because her own daughter would have better sense. While she was visiting, I created my seasonal centerpiece. I found the idea somewhere, but I can’t remember, but the idea is not mine.