On Jello and Womanhood ~ by Allison Rhodes, Decatur, Georgia

Memories of food and of the women in my family are closely related. A time honored way to care for loved ones, certain culinary offerings represent to me the temperament and personhood of the women who were the elders in my family. Today is my late mother’s birthday and I suppose I will always miss her. Some of her meals were classics in our family and one in particular set a living example for me.


Mary Martha Rowland Rhodes was a loving mother and a creative woman. In the winter of 1970 she extended an invitation to my boyfriend for Sunday dinner. Mama asked me what he especially liked to eat. The guy, later to become her son in law, was not a “picky eater” I replied. This sort of sets most cooks minds to ease. I knew he would enjoy her roast beef, green beans, squash soufflé and sour cream pound cake which were regular Sunday items. Then I added, “I know he really likes gelatin salads with fruit.”


Gelatin salads were not a menu item at my home but Mama was undaunted. Equipped with her ideas, but without the aid of a recipe, she embarked on her creative process. The lack of a recipe was an earmark of Mama’s creative process. For instance, when sewing she would often say, “Anybody can make it like that” as she added or removed a detail from the frock pictured on the pattern. “This will be different. You won’t see yourself coming and going.” For her this meant the outfit would be special. For me it meant I would indeed not see myself in anything that resembled an off the rack item.


Back to the cooking episode: The dusty jello mold, which had heretofore been only part of the kitchen’s early American wall décor, was taken down and put in the sink for washing. Her thoughts were to fill the gelatin with an array of wonderful fruit and place something whipped in the middle of the wreath- like mold. Planning ahead as good cooks do, the jello salad was made the night before and placed in the refrigerator. It would be bright red and in the center there would be a mound of whipped sinful stuff to slather on top.


Sunday arrived and we girls helped Mama put out the meat platter and the bowls of vegetables. My sister Becky and I were told to have a seat while she unmolded the salad. We waited patiently at the table until she would present us all with the salad extraordinaire. Then we heard, “Dadgummit!”(the closest my mother ever came to cursing) coming from the kitchen. A mélange of pineapple, strawberries and bananas was swimming in a platter of runny jello. Boyfriend and the rest of the family rushed in and laughed heartily. Disappointed, but ever- resourceful (a child of the Great Depression never let food go to waste), Mama set out to redeem the jello. “Go ahead and let’s have the blessing and I’ll be right back.” We began to eat and a few moments later she arrived with the same runny concoction but now it was dressed up with cream cheese she had piped in swirls with the cake decorator. More laughter and the offer of straws ensued. She never missed a beat.


Mama’s successes were punctuated with the occasional flop….but that seems to be the price you pay for being creative. Some crafts may have looked a bit weird, but she could help them evolve into an interesting creation. Each flop was merely a challenge to do it differently or better. She saw promise in odd junk. There was the year she used a drawer full of tops from little concentrated orange juice cans and fashioned an award winning Christmas display around our front door. We all thought her idea a bit wacky and yearned for a simple wreath or a Santa on the roof until we saw the final product.


Mama left us almost 6 years ago. I miss her terribly. I miss her cooking, her gentle loving and her beautiful crafty hands. But one legacy she left me is represented by that jello salad. She taught me I could live life without a recipe. Sometimes it would fail, sometimes it would fly. I could be different and that would be special. When I hurt I could trust the genetic resiliency represented by that jello episode to make something good out of what seems a flop. Thanks, Mama.