The Life Of Rah: An Autobiography

By Rahimah S. Phillips

Have you ever thought that you found the love of your life--only to find out that he wasn't? Have you ever thought that your only child would be your one saving grace--only to find out that he wasn't? Have you ever thought that the one man in your life, the only man that you've ever known as a father, would be there to protect you forever--only to find out that he wasn't?

Have you ever wished for the perfect mother--only to find out that she wasn't, or the perfect family--only to find out that that they weren't? Have you ever felt like you just want to be normal--only to find out that you aren't? Have you ever felt all alone in the world--only to find out that there are others who feel the same way? Have you ever felt like you wanted to die--only to realize that you have so much to live for?

Rahimah shares this compelling story about her life as an amazing young Black girl, who came of age when she was a daughter, a granddaughter, a motherless child, and a mother. Take this journey with her, as she attempts to walk by faith while learning how to live with love and hate; while coping with life and death; while seeking to understand race and religion; while determining the difference between truth and lies, and while overcoming trials and tribulations.

Throughout her life, Rahimah has struggled with fear, rejection, and abandonment. This is a story about vulnerability, insecurity, sexuality, and spirituality. This is a story about being torn between loyalty and integrity; and choosing between self-destruction and self-awareness. This is a story about determination and inspiration. Everyone has a story. This is Rahimah's story. This is her life--(The Life of Rah).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christian Faith Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 15, 2022
• ISBN: 9781098004828

Book preview

Chapter 1

When I Was

Drops of snow hit my top lip. Each drop felt colder and wetter than the drop before. My lip burned from the combination of water, dirt, and blood. I looked over at my mother. She was shivering, while she squeezed my left hand tightly. Without a word, she let my hand go and bent down to pick up some snow from the ground. She then made a small snowball and rubbed it across my top lip. I continued to cry, as tears ran down my face, mixing with the blood and dirt oozing from my busted lip. My mother was pissed, and I knew it. As a matter of fact, everyone knew it!

My mother was known for three things. She could curse anyone out, in a matter of seconds; she could drink you under the table; and she loved her daughter. That day, my teacher got cursed out for the umpteenth time. I had fallen off the sliding board at my school and busted my lip. My mother didn’t like my nursery schoolteacher because, on occasion, she would tape my mouth shut for cursing and tie me to my chair with a jump rope. That day (the day it snowed), I remembered that the melted snow on the sliding board was wet, cold, and white. Walking to the bus stop, I noticed that the snow on the ground was dirty and black. I went to Weequahic Daytime Nursery and my mother had just cursed out my preschool teacher for the last time! That was the first memory of my mother. I was three. Life would soon change. And that’s how life was—when I was.

Looking at my pictures, I looked happy when I was three. It was the late 1960s, and my mother was about twenty years old. I don’t have many memories of my mother, especially not when I was young, and she was actually trying to be a good mother. The thing that I remember most, when I was three, is that my mother would take me to the nursery school every single day (regardless.) That meant I went to school in the spring, summer, winter, and fall—whether it was sunny, rainy, freezing, or snowing outside.

We didn’t have a car then and had to catch the bus everywhere we went. I hated being dragged to the nursery school in the freezing cold, but it was important to my mother because it was part of our daily routine and showed consistency. It showed that my mother was trying to be a good mother. It also meant that she loved me. This was a good memory. Now, those days are gone, and fifty years of my life crowd my brain. I am trying to remember everything. Some things were good and some things were bad (like the time when I was six.)

I was playing in the bathtub, with my little tugboat and called it a ship. Wham! My mother slapped me right across my face and almost knocked out my loose tooth. She thought that I cursed and said, Shit! She said, Say it again! My face hurt, but I rolled my eyes, sucked my teeth under my breath, and kept on playing. I was more worried about losing my taste buds than losing my loose tooth because my mother had a habit of saying, I’m gonna slap the taste out your mouth! I was used to being slapped and beaten. My mother beat me all the time and, sometimes, for no reason at all. Other times, she threatened to slap the black off me! I got the dumb look. Slap the black off me? What the heck did that mean? On top of being beaten, was I going to wake up one day and be light-skinned?

At first, I really wasn’t worried about the beatings because everyone I knew got beatings. My mother got beatings from her boyfriends. My cousins got beatings from my youngest aunt. My friends got beatings from their mothers. The dogs even got beatings from my grandfather. One time, I saw my grandfather beat one of the Dobermans with my grandmother’s shoe because the dog had chewed the other shoe. Another time, I saw my grandmother beat my little cousin. I remember hearing my little cousin yell, Lordy! Lordy! Lordy! My grandmother would say, Don’t call on the Lord now! I laughed out loud in my head, but I was shocked. My grandmother didn’t do a whole lot of yelling, screaming, or beating. She was the matriarch of the family. Everyone called her Nana, which meant grandmother, godmother, nurse, or chief. I would later learn that everyone either feared, or loved, my grandmother. It was the norm—a family tradition. I was six. And that’s how life was—when I was.

When I was seven, my mother and grandmother took me school shopping for back-to-school clothes. We would go to Two Guys department store downtown Newark, on the corner of Broad and Market. I was allowed to pick out two outfits. One outfit was for the first day of school and the other one was for the second day of school. I always had an eye for fashion and looked pretty cool when it was time to go back to school. The only other time that I dressed up was for Easter. I could always count on my grandmother, or one of my aunts, to either buy me a new outfit or make me a dress. Unfortunately, I looked quite the mess when the other 362 days of the year came around. Yup, that was it. Easter and the first two days of school—those were my times to shine!

I laughed out loud in my head, as I thought about my long, skinny, hairy legs sticking out from underneath my Easter dress. Memories of my mother also made me laugh. Sometimes, she would say the weirdest things to me. She would tell me not to worry about my long, skinny, hairy legs because men would find them sexy when I was older. I didn’t care about my mother’s life lessons back then and didn’t want to hear about grown men finding me sexy because I was only seven. I cared more about the kids who teased me every day and were calling me Skinny Minnie and Hairy Harry.

When I was seven, somehow I knew my life was about to change forever (and not in a good way.) By the time I was eight years old, I knew that I was different from most of the other girls my age. I tried to look like the girls in my neighborhood, but - deep down, I knew that I was different. I walked different. I talked different. I looked different. I hated my body and did whatever I could to look like some of the other girls. This one girl, Rhonda, already had boobs and was wearing a training bra. Little Miss Rhonda Clark was ten going on thirty. I, on the other hand, looked like an eight-year-old boy.

I often hid behind the door in the locker room because I didn’t want anyone to see me undressing. I especially didn’t want them to see me in that hideous blue gym suit, with the matching belt and big silver buckle. I was a sight for sore eyes. I was determined not to be seen (not me, the future queen of fashion.) At school, I would pray and ask God for bigger boobs and a butt - any kind of butt. By this time, I had graduated from halter tops to tube tops (clearly, to accentuate my flat chest.) I would walk around chanting, "I must… I must… I must increase my bust!" I would dream about the high heels that I would wear (when I was older) to make my butt and calves bigger - and the arches in my feet higher.

God must not have been listening because I was still tall and lanky, when I was nine - and all the neighborhood kids still made fun of me, except for Rhonda (because she had stayed back twice and always smelled like pee.) I often wondered why I was so much taller than everyone else in my family, except for my eldest aunt, who had legs up to the ceiling. Yes ma’am… My eldest aunt and I were what everyone referred to as a tall glass of water.

There was another tall girl at my school, but she looked like a grown woman. She was what everybody referred to as a brick house. She had legs up to the ceiling, like my eldest aunt, and wore a skirt and heels every day. Our English teacher would turn beet red and start salivating, every time she entered the classroom. I laughed out loud in my head because he always adjusted his tie and pants after she left. I couldn’t understand why all the other girls my age looked so much different than me. We weren’t even in high school yet! I tried my best to pick out clothes that made me look more mature.

I remember strolling down the fake runway in my dress and heels, at my first fashion show (when I was ten.) It was at my grandmother’s church and I wore one of my Easter outfits. After that, I began doing weekend fashion shows at the Peppermint Lounge on Central Avenue in East Orange. When I was fifteen, I started doing catalog work and local hair shows. My eldest aunt had introduced me to the fashion world, and I was already auditioning for TV commercials and going on go-sees in Manhattan (by the time I was sixteen.) Being tall and lanky was finally starting to pay off, but - other than fashion, my eldest aunt and I didn’t seem to have a whole lot in common.

I remember the time when she took me to the movies to see Prince in Purple Rain. On the way home, she just came out of nowhere and asked me if I sweat during sex. This was her somewhat subtle attempt to get closer to me. I turned my head toward her and gave her the dumb look. Did she really think that I was gonna spill the beans? Shenanigans! I knew that my eldest aunt was just spying for my grandmother. Yup, that was her job! And there wasn’t much else to say about her. We both liked to read, and she enjoyed theater and classical music. She and my grandmother had taken me to see West Side Story on Broadway, when I was younger. I suppose that was when I began to enjoy musicals like Porgy and Bess, Grease, and later Dirty Dancing. As it turns out, fashion wasn’t my only passion. My passion for music also grew.

In the 1970s, I loved to listen to Bob Marley sing No Woman No Cry. My mother would say that I had an old soul. Sometimes, I would actually act like a child and sing the ABC song along with The Jackson 5. Most of the time, I would count on The Staple Singers to keep us in a good mood by singing Respect Yourself and Let’s Do It Again. My best friends (Karen and Egypt) and I went crazy whenever Car Wash by Rose Royce came on the radio. Sometimes, we would really act crazy and pretend to be famous—singing Ooh Boy, I Love You So (in the mirror with our hairbrushes.) The world was dance-crazed back then.

Then, there were the soundtracks to Black cinema movies - like Shaft and Claudine. On late summer nights, we couldn’t get enough of Isaac Hayes and Curtis Mayfield. When I was alone, music began to take a backseat to television. I spent most Friday nights watching TV shows, such as Charlie’s Angels, The Love Boat, Fantasy Island, and Baretta. Some nights, when my mother was still around, we watched our favorite movies and popped Jiffy popcorn. I would always sit and stare at the foil getting bigger and bigger! And that’s how life was—when I was.

During the day, when other mothers worked, my mother could always be found watching her stories. She never missed an episode of Erica Kane on All My Children, or Asa Buchanan on One Life to Live. As I grew older, I started to recall each and every episode of my own life (when I was alone.) I began keeping a diary that I would write in every day after school. When my words flowed like poetry, I would write the poems in a special little book. My poetry book consisted of ten pieces of large index cards stapled together. I numbered each page like real authors did when they wrote real books. I decorated two other index cards with pictures and stickers, colored them green, and wrote my name in large letters so that people would know who the author was. These were my cover pages for the front and back of my poetry book.

Although my diary contained my innermost thoughts and a few family secrets, it was not as special as my poetry book. My diary was pink and had a lock that only a very special and extremely small key could fit. It was certainly pretty and definitely personal, but it was not special! Maybe, it was the fact that my diary was store-bought and my poetry book was handcrafted by me! Either way, I could open up my books and drift away into a land of memories. Some of the memories were good, and some memories were not so good. And that’s how life was—when I was.

In the 1980s (when I was becoming a young woman), everyone was falling in love with Theo and Denise on The Cosby Show. It reminded me of how my mother and I watched Soul Train and Good Times, when I was young. Times changed, when I was in high school and went to stay with my grandmother. When I was fourteen, my grandfather would chase the boys away with his gigantic, handcrafted African wooden spear. During the holidays, I loved to watch my grandfather put on his dress sweaters and dance like Bill Cosby at the beginning of the show. My grandfather was always so charming and funny, and he reminded me of Cliff Huxtable.

When I was in my twenties, all the around the way girls wore big earrings and tried to rap like Salt-n-Pepa and Yo-Yo. U.N.I.T.Y. by Queen Latifah (who also went to Irvington High) and Ruffneck by MC Lyte made every young woman feel liberated. Then, all the ladies turned crazy, sexy cool and started sporting short haircuts like T-Boz from TLC and Halle Berry in Strictly Business. It seemed like every girl I knew tried to rock the asymmetrical hairdo. And I was no exception. I must have gone to the beauty salon ten times to try and get Richard to style my hair the right way. I refused to put a weave in my hair, and he refused to cooperate by not cutting my hair to match T-Boz’s picture!

By the 1990s, club music and house music had taken off. In between the chaos that was my life, my friends and I danced to hits like Love Sensation, Doctor Love, I’m Caught Up (In a One Night Love Affair), I Was Born This Way, and My Love is Free - at Club Zanzibar and Club 88. I remember the first time that I came home from Club Zanzibar (back when I was sixteen.) Strolling in (like I was grown) - at 5:30 in the morning! My grandmother was already up and getting ready for church. She gave me this look like I must have lost my mind. I laughed out loud in my head…but I never did it again.

In the 1990s (when I was a young mother), I listened to the smooth voices of Jodeci singing Come & Talk to Me, Janet Jackson singing If and That’s the Way Love Goes, and Tony, Toni, Tone singing Lay Your Head on My Pillow. One of my favorite R&B songs was Knockin’ Da Boots by H-Town. The hip-hop era had also taken off with cuts like What’s the 411 by Mary J. Blige and You’re All I Need by Method Man and Mary J. My other favorite songs were Doin’ It and Mama Said Knock You Out by LL Cool J. I also loved One More Chance by Biggie Smalls, and Keep Ya Head Up and Dear Mama by Tupac. But we definitely can’t forget about the Jeeps, Lex Coups, Bimaz & Benz by Lost Boyz and Bone Thugs-N-Harmony singing Tha Crossroads. Another favorite was O.P.P. by Naughty by Nature.

In the early 1990’s, even the White boys got it in with Color Me Badd, singing I Wanna Sex You Up. Back then, I would flip back and forth between WBLS, KISS FM, and Hot 97, tryin’ to catch my favorite artists—like Common and Lauryn Hill. I was also always tryin’ to catch the latest gossip from Wendy! Sometimes, I would just sit in my car and vibe to the lyrics of Ice Cube’s It Was a Good Day and Ahmad’s Back in the Day. Somehow, those two songs always seemed to be the perfect start and finish of a perfect day.

By the mid-nineties, I was a Reggae fanatic and had started partying at Club Eclipse in Irvington. Every CD that I owned was by Buju Banton, or Shaba Ranks. Songs like Action by Terror Fabulous and Murder She Wrote by Chaka Demus rang through the streets. Then, the millennium came.

Life, when I was in my thirties, reminded me of life in my teens. One day, things were going good. The next day, things were going terribly wrong. One minute, I was up. Then, I was down. I was always trying to find solid ground. I didn’t know who to trust and where to turn, but I tried my best just to maintain. I wished that I was young again. Back when I was young, I didn’t have the best life. But it was my life. And that’s how life was—when I was.

Chapter 2

School Daze

When I was a young child, I felt like my life was passing me by. I often felt like I was in a daze. Some days were good, and some days were bad. Believe it, or not, the best days were when I was in school. That’s because I was good at school. I had been taught the value of going to school and getting a good education at a very young age. Education would become my foundation. Without it, I would have nothing! I learned the importance of education early on, when I was about five years old. I remember the first time that I actually went to a real school like it was yesterday.

I was going to a real school. I was no longer in nursery school! I was going to kinnygarden! I sat in a daze on the edge of my mother’s bed and watched her sleep. It was 8:15 in the morning. I think it was a Monday because it was the first day of school. Then again, it must have been a Tuesday because we always started school the day after Labor Day (which always fell on a Monday.) There were two main rules on the East Coast, and one of them was that no one could wear white before Easter. The other was that no one could wear white after Labor Day.

I was only five years old and the rules didn’t matter much to me, but I followed them anyway. I finished eating my Cheerios and prayed that my mother would not wake up. I always ate Cheerios, or applesauce with milk. Besides my grandfather, those had become the constants in my life. I knew that I was running late for my first day of school, but I wanted to finish watching The Flintstones. They came on right after Bugs Bunny & Friends and Casper the Friendly Ghost. Sometimes, I even got up early enough to watch Underdog and Magilla Gorilla.

Just as the credits started rolling, I heard my mother yell my name. She always called me by my first and middle name, when she was mad. Then she yelled, Girl, you better get yourself up and get ready for school! The truth of the matter is that my mother should have been awake way before me and helping me get dressed for my first day of school. After all, I was only five years old! Instead, she did what she always did at night—fell asleep watching TV and drinking beer. That’s why I had to wake up early and get myself ready.

It was my job to clean up after her and get myself ready for school. I changed out of the bell-bottom jeans and new T-shirt that I had picked out all by myself and put on the beautiful red dress my mother picked out for me. I was always dressing like a flower child (the Black version.) Every Saturday, I wore two-tone bell-bottom jeans and a halter top. My jeans were actually reversible. I could wear them on either side and pretend that I had two separate outfits. Hideous!

Sometimes, I wore a sundress. One thing that you could always count on was that I would wear my afro puffs, or a big afro with a headband. I was so grateful that my mother never made me wear ponytail holders, with those big colored balls, in my hair like other little girls. We always rocked our natural hair. Every now and then, my mother would use Vigorol to smooth out my edges and the naps in my kitchen. I hated it because it stank up the whole apartment. Besides, I liked my afro and the naps that came with it. I also liked my mother’s TWA (teeny-weeny afro.) I didn’t put a full perm in my hair until after my son was born, when I was in college.

One time, when I was in high school, I tried a California curl. It was supposed to be the dry version of an S curl. I liked it because I didn’t have to spray any activator on it. Everyone knows that curl activator was a hot, juicy mess! Reminiscing about the way I dressed and wore my hair made me think back to that first day of kinnygarden. I was only five years old, but I was serious about my hair and my clothes!

My red dress was gorgeous! It came right above my knees and had buttons straight down the center. Red was my favorite color. The dress had a ruffled collar with lace around it and elbow-length sleeves. I wore black, patent-leather shoes with a strap that went across my foot.

I wore ugly, little red socks to match my dress. The socks folded down and did not reach above my ankles. They were also trimmed with lace and were also hideous because they looked like baby socks. In any event, I was ready to face the world and all the other kinnygarteners who were about to embark upon their first day of school.

I ran down two flights of stairs, bypassing the scary elevator. I bolted out the cracked glass front door of our apartment building. I looked out the window before leaving my mother’s bedroom and saw my two best friends, Elly and Maddie. Elly’s real name was Elizabeth. She was my age, but she acted a whole lot older. I didn’t like her very much, but she was Maddie’s little sister. Maddie’s real name was Madeline. She, on the other hand, was one year older than us and acted like she was an adult. She was very smart, and I liked her a lot.

My mother yelled my name, again. I could hear her calling out my first and middle name through her bedroom window. I looked up toward the second floor window and saw the look on her face. I went into prayer mode, like I had done earlier when I wanted to finish watching The Flintstones. I was no stranger to praying because my grandmother, who lived around the corner from us, dragged me to church every chance she got.

My mother and I glared into each other’s eyes, with an all-too-familiar stare down. I moved my lips, but nothing came out. In actuality, I was silently pleading with my mother to stop embarrassing me in front of my new friends. Elly and Maddie lived in the apartment building across the street. They told me that they had previously lived in the building next to me and my mother, but had recently moved into their new building. I had never been inside their apartment before, but we played outside together all summer.

My mother obviously could not hear my lips moving because she continued to stare me down. Elly and Maddie began to walk ahead, but I asked them to wait for me. We were already running late, and I could tell that they were anxious to get to school on time. They walked ahead slowly and I could see them looking back for me, as I continued to plead with my mother. We were having an ongoing debate about whether, or not, I should be allowed to walk to school by myself.

I tried to convince my mother that I was not walking by myself, and pointed out that Elly and Maddie were waiting for me. My mother finally caved, after letting me know that she would be sitting in the window watching us. Walking to school with my new best friends on the very first day of school felt like the best day of my life. My mother trusted me, and I felt proud not to let her down. Elly, Maddie, and I reached the front doors of Chancellor Avenue Elementary School - and all was well with the world!

Even though summer was over, school days were fun because I was away from my mother for an entire day. I liked school, and I liked my teachers. I don’t remember much about my kindergarten teacher. Most of my memories were of other teachers in my school and my neighborhood. After kindergarten, I transferred to Chancellor Avenue Annex (which was located just down the street.)

I would live in the same neighborhood until I was nine, when I was in the fourth grade. Although most of the people I knew were poor and lived in the projects or beat-up apartment buildings, there were actually some nice houses in Newark. They were on the side streets, near Weequahic Park. In fact, my grandparents owned one of those houses and lived in it—right behind my school.

My mother and I lived with my grandparents until I was five years old. My mother gave birth to me at the ripe young age of seventeen. She had not finished out the year at East Side High School and ended up taking night classes at Barringer High School so that she could receive her GED. Then, she took summer classes until she graduated and got her high school diploma. She then went on to college for two years and received an associate degree from Rutgers University in Newark. That’s when I knew that I too would graduate from Rutgers.

Other than going to that horrid nursery school, I don’t remember much of my childhood before turning five. I had seen photo albums and lots of pictures of me and my mother. I saw one picture of me sitting on her lap, with a big stuffed pink Easter bunny sitting next to us. She wore a navy blue dress with red buttons down the middle, and her hair was cut short. She had big, beautiful eyes and a smile to match. I saw another picture of her holding me in a beautiful white Christening dress. My mother was very pretty. It looked like she really loved me and enjoyed being a mother.

Other than a few birthday parties, I didn’t see any pictures of me and my grandmother together. I thought this was very strange. In the commercials on TV, grandparents seemed to love their grandchildren more than the children’s parents did. Clearly, this was not the case in my situation. My grandmother always put up a good front in front of other people, but she always seemed mean when she was alone with me and my mother.

When my mother and I moved out of my grandmother’s house, we continued to live in the building on the corner of Wainwright Street and Chancellor Avenue for the next four years. My mother began to drink heavily, and I noticed that she never went to work like Elly and Maddie’s mother, who was also single. They told me that their father died, but I heard that he just left. I didn’t care one way, or another, because I had never even met my father. The only male role model in my family was my grandfather, and he was a godsend—an angel!

I needed one of God’s angel’s to look over me because the days of my mother watching over me from her bedroom window were long gone. My mother had become the child, and I was the adult. All of a sudden, I had become the cook and the cleaning lady. Needless to say, this put a damper on my social life. I hardly saw Elly and Maddie anymore and spent most weekends at my grandparents’ house.

I often wondered how my mother managed to pay the bills with no money. It turned out that we were on welfare. Our very mysterious orange car (which magically appeared in our parking lot one day) no longer worked. It had mismatch doors and an engine that looked like it had caught on fire. Without money and a car, I started to become suspicious of my mother’s actions. How were we living? When I left for school and arrived home from school, my mother was always sleeping. She no longer cared about what I wore and how I got to school.

My mother could no longer pay the rent at our apartment in Newark. When I was nine, we moved to East Orange (to stay with my youngest aunt.) There were six of us (three adults and three children) living in a two-bedroom apartment. It was a nice house (a two-family) on Chestnut Street. My aunt had her own problems, and we only stayed there for about six months.

Then, my mother and I moved to a building on South Clinton Street in East Orange. By then, I had begun to see it all. Drugs and alcohol had taken its toll. I was sick of it all and just wanted to concentrate on getting out—out from underneath my mother and my grandmother. I also wanted to get out of my new neighborhood. I wanted to get away from my new building and away from my new life.

The apartment building was six stories high, and we lived on the fourth floor. The building was two stories higher than the one in Newark. There were six apartments on each floor, which gave me the potential to earn over $200 each week. I had it all figured out. I would charge each person fifty cents per bag to take out their garbage and another five to ten dollars per person to clean their apartment and iron their clothes for the week. It all depended on the number of people in each apartment and how many chores I did. Some days, I earned $50. Some days, I earned nothing at all.

Although we were farther away, I would still spend weekends at my grandmother’s house (doing chores.) Unlike most children who were excited to spend time with their grandparents, my situation was a little different. I enjoyed seeing my grandfather and loved him very much. He was the apple of my eye. On the other hand, my only purpose in my grandmother’s eyes was to clean her house. In return, I was given a home-cooked meal and an allowance.

I liked eating at my grandmother’s house because she (like everyone else in the family) was a good cook. I especially liked her macaroni and cheese. She could make macaroni and cheese like nobody’s business! I remember sitting at the kitchen table on Goldsmith Avenue and watching her grate the blocks of Kraft sharp cheddar cheese with a huge silver grater. She would mix in a perfect combination of milk and melted butter with the elbow macaroni, and put the glass dish in the oven. I would salivate, as she set the oven temperature to 375 degrees. It would be the longest forty-five minutes of my life! I couldn’t wait until I was bigger and would make my macaroni and cheese just the same way!

My mother was a good cook too, but not like my grandmother. She could make some of the same things, but they didn’t taste as good. I once read that if a person can read, he or she can cook. I was always taught that real cooking comes from the heart. A real cook doesn’t need to measure the ingredients to a recipe. They just know the right amount is a pinch of this and a dash of that. A real cook can create something from nothing. A real cook can make a dish taste like it was made from scratch, when it wasn’t. It’s like knowing when a recipe says, Just add water, you add milk instead. The dish will come out much creamier.

My mother’s specialty was making breakfast, mostly because she never went to work and had a lot of extra time in the mornings. Her other specialty was chicken stew with large egg noodles and mixed vegetables. Unlike my grandmother, my mother never made anything for Christmas or Thanksgiving. Sometimes, she would make something special for Easter. One year, she cooked a duck. I didn’t want to eat it, but she made me. I remember it being chewy.

After that Easter, I never wanted to eat a chocolate bunny again! The cooked duck reminded me of a rabbit.