the habit of being

When Uncle Lane gave her a bushel for free, my mother’s first thought was “there ought to be some way to get drunk off all these peaches.” That’s how Sharon and Kathy’s devastating les peaches anodynes got started, and she’s reviving them for my visit home. Apparently she and Kathy spent a long time perfecting the recipe, but never wrote it down. One important factor is that the peaches be ripe, so she’s got them on the windowsill, and maybe by Sunday. They were so good that she and Kathy had to not tell people about them. They were so popular there’d be four blenders going at once. Kathy is the one from the photos who got her period in my mom’s favorite jeans. Or else she got her period in her own favorite jeans and mom convinced her it was worth hand-washing them for a date, on account of how skinny they made her. Something about blood and demin. Anyway. In addition to the peaches, she’s also got the blackberries-to-die-for, the squash-for-days, greenbeans, and watermelon. She already went to the very-best-cookies, homemade butter, and cream farmers market on Monday. She’s got new ingredients for the pimento cheese, which she’s roasting her own peppers for instead of buying the pimentos in a jar.