Today is my mother's birthday. These days she uses the Jack Benny formula and remains firmly lodged at age thirty-nine, but no matter what her age, she is the quiet steady engine that keeps this family well fed and motoring right along. She always turns out great meals except on her birthday when she likes to go to her favorite Chinese restaurant. Being of Southern heritage, when my mother cooks, she usually adds a stick or two of butter to any recipe. A family favorite is Greek chicken "like Yiya used to make." My non Greek mother is not particularly fond of this dish, but she patiently churns it out by request. As the saying goes in my family, first you take a chicken and bake it with tomato sauce. Cook the "macaroni" which is a really thick version of spaghetti. This is when my mother steps in with a stick of butter. After pouring all the tomatoey chicken drippings on top of those buttery noodles, we sit down to eat. I can't even stand to write about it, it's that good.
My mother was born in 1917 at Sibley Hospital which was on North Capitol Street. Her parents, Bernice and Roger Calvert were married the year before on Bernice's eighteenth birthday. They named the baby Bernice Bailey, and so she became "BB" which morphed into the Bebe we know today. My grandmother wrote: "Baby's first ride was from the hospital to Mount Pleasant in Dr. Molzari's car. After that she has had numbers of auto rides, street car rides, baby carriage rides, but I think she loves best of all to ride in daddy's arms."
Happy Birthday, Mom. You're still a babe.
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