I remember that my mother always wore brown coffee color stockings...
She worked at the Fort Benjamin Harrison Finance Center and she dressed professionally everyday.
And her stocking were always coffee colored...the same color as her legs.
Connie was a beautiful petite woman with coffee colored skin. She never ever hit 100 pounds though she may have tried. She was a fiesty 4 foot 9 inches, and for as long as I can remember she wore her hair short. Not a boring short either. I remember auburns and blonds, redish streaks and blond highlights. When she worked, which was all her adult life, she feather her hair. She would wake up every morning and curl her hair.
She had a gold open faced crown on one of her front teeth (just like her mother and sister and brother).
Sleeping pretty...
My mom slept like a woman who did not want to mess up her hair. I still can not
Don't call her skinny...
She hated being called skinny. Though she may have been 98 pounds soaking wet. She once explained to me that being called skinny was the equivalent of being called fat. A thin person does not want to negatively be refered to as skinny no more than a heavy person wants to be called fat.
Chef Connie
My mother was a chef. At least according to me she was. She was the best cook ever! My favorite meal later in life that she always made so special was cube steak, gravy, mashed potatoes, and spinach. Her potatoes were always so amazing and homemade. I remember they always had little lumps in them because she mashed them with a hand masher. She liked to cook. She used a big black skillet to fry chicken, steak, rabbit, and other amazing gravy dishes. I still have that black skillet and the hand masher.
I think her most notary dish to people outside our house was her homemade pound cakes. I my goodness I loved her pound cakes and I am still searching for her recipe to this day. I remember she used to grind orange and lemon peels into the cake batter. I did not spend as much time as I should have with her in the kitchen. I would occassionally watch her work her magic though. She would make this huge pot of liquid dressing that would cook down into dressing-heaven. She love pecans and would let me help her crumble theme for her desserts.
Her banana pudding was a fan favorite too. She made it from scratch and would bake it in the oven. I remember she would let me whip the egg whites with a manual hand mixer to make the topping. She would brown it in the oven. I still have this hand mixer.
I remember her playing the radio in the kitchen whenever she went into one of her cooking frenzies. The sounds of WTLC playing R&B music still playing in my head. The sounds of Earth Wind and Fire and especially Christmas R&B hold very special memories for me.
Holidays, especially Christmas, was were special times at our house. My mother would cook for the entire family all Christmas eve. A tradition that I took over when she passed. I remember mother would stay up all night on Christmas Eve cooking, baking, chopping, mixing, and sauteing... My stomach would grumble all night with all the smells of roasted turkey, pound cake, caramel cakes, greens, dressing, gravy,sweet potatoes, macaroni and cheese ....
This was torture! Because I couldn't eat one piece until the family came on Christmas afternoon. Presentation was important. My cousin, pastor Wynn E. Samuels Sr., would cut the perfectly browned turkey after prayer. Which didn't happen until later and later every year because we had to wait for everyone to arrive 2 hours late. I felt like I was starvinge every Christmas hahaha...
When I was in high school I would go to a firends house every Christmas Eve to avoid the no-touch policy and yucky smell of KY's (Chitterlings). My mother loved them! She was raised in east St. Louis so this was a special treat for family members every year. I later rationalized that the treat was finding someone willing to stink up their entire house cleaning the mess out of them and boiling them. They would all smother them in hot sauce and eat them like a delicacy. I just could not do it. I felt that anything that smelled that bad had to be nasty.
Desserts I remember fondly: Caramel cakes, pecan pies, banana puddings, pound cakes,
Macaroni & Cheese:
Home: Homeownership was always very important to my mother. I was born in the same house I currently reside (3518). Our house was a 2-bedroom single story brick house with a full basement. My mother kept an immaculate house, almost obsessively so. I am sure it came from all her years cleaning homes of rich white families. I remember she woudl hire a cleaning lady to help spring clean. I tried my best to stay clear. I was assigned my room and the bathroom, and I learned how to clean those from top to bottom.
We had white carpet, white walls with red and black horizontal stripes, and a red leather sectional couch.
My mother would polish that red leather couch regularly with some type of leather polish that kept it moisturized.
Porch: Our house had these beautiful brick archways on our large front porch. In front of these archways were green _____ bushes that let you see over them but hid all porch activities from the street.
Address:
My mom told me that I learned my address when I was about 5 years old. I would say "a thirty-five and a eighteen... and a gladstone...". (smile)
My room: Since I was an only child I always had my own room. I has been every color I can think of and it always had a theme until later in my teenage years. Once my room was orange and had big raggedy ann and andy pictures on the wall. My mother had a friend that was an artist that drew those pictures special for me and my wall. I have a picture of the orange room and I was probably around 5 or 6 year old. I also remember the next color: pink! It was all featured around my strawberry shortcake doll theme. I loved strawberry shortcake! All the movies and the Saturday morning cartoons inspired my comforter set and pepto bismal pink colored walls. My mother also has her artist friend design a large strawberry shortcake piece special for me and my walls.
The Love of her life:
The love of my mother's life and my father Leach Spivey, Jr.
Though they were divorced, I buried my mother with her wedding ring that she wore until the day she died. It was a marquis diamond solitair on a petite gold band. The marquis was raised and turned at an angle. It was really very beautiful and perfect for her petite fingers. I think her ring finger might have been a size 5 or 6.
My parents were married in a little yellow house across for the park... She wore a blue dress.
She lived in a house on Cornelious
