Navy Beans

I’m cutting the last of the ham off the bone, laying aside slices that I’ll wrap up and freeze for sandwiches or scalloped potatoes, but I know what I’m going to do with the bone.  I‘ve left some of the fat and gristle on it and a few bits of meat in hard-to-get-to places where the bone curves it. It is going for Navy beans.  There are some things you can’t let go of despite flow of time and fashion and, for me, one is my mother’s admonition never to waste anything. 

Growing up, Fridays were tuna casserole or oyster stew, Sunday (if we were lucky) could be fried chicken with mashed potatoes and Tuesday might be meatloaf, but somewhere in the week there was sure to be Navy beans.  When I’m done cleaning up the cutting board, I’ll get out a large pot and dump the beans in to soak them overnight.  I could take the easy way out and use canned beans but it makes a lot more this way and I like to have the leftovers. I’ll add plenty of salt and pepper and a bay leaf, as my mother did.  One thing I won’t do like my mother is to add onions.  As an adult, I use onions regularly in all kinds of cooking, but as a child, they were one of the few things that completely destroyed the taste of a meal for me.

Of course, I ate them anyway.  One of the rules of our family was that you never left anything on your plate.  If you didn’t want seconds, fine - with seven children around the table there was always someone willing to eat what you didn’t like - but you didn’t waste.  We’d say our prayer before meals and Mom would dish us all out a big bowl of  Navy beans, usually with cornbread.  The syrup that we poured on the cornbread was made with something called Maplene that I think disappeared with the sixties. She’d heat up sugar on the stove with some water in it and then pour in the Maplene until it thickened enough to become a thin syrup.

After dinner, whoever’s turn it was to do the dishes would always clear up the table. Two of us each night, one to wash and one to dry.  I always preferred washing.  If Mom were helping with cleaning up in the kitchen, we’d sing together as we washed. Whether she was cooking or cleaning, my mother always sang as she worked. She sang in the car with all us packed in the back of a Rambler station wagon before all of the seatbelt laws.  Before seatbelts. 

A little over a year ago when my mother could no longer walk or dress herself without help and was living in a group home,  my brother Ed flew out from Idaho, my sister Judi from Tennessee, and me from New Jersey to celebrate her ninetieth birthday with her. One afternoon, we took her to Red Lobster - my mother’s idea of a five star restaurant - and she ordered a huge meal.  As she finished the last bite, my brother Ed laughed and said, “And she’s going to eat every last one of those depression era beans.”

I’m humming to myself as I fill the sink with water and wash off the cutting board and knives.   My mother died two days after Christmas.  Despite her best efforts, my faith has gone the way of fish on Friday, scapulas and stations of the cross.  But I don’t need a heaven to justify her life.  I have the memories of childhood.  I have the feeling of the song that rises from the warm dishwater.  I have the Navy beans. That is enough.