Getting ready for Easter began Saturday.  We stop for coffee before we go for the roast and ham.  Chatting away as we go.  We talk about estimates for a walkway we're going to put in and all of a sudden there are numbers bouncing around the car before the coffee has been absorbed by my brain.  

We laugh because he has no number filter before coffee and I seem to have a number wall.  Or a number waterfall: the numbers just seem to roll, surge, and then go over the edge.  We both laugh and arrive at the store.

We get to the store and we separate to get the ingredients for our parts of the meal.  James is off to the meat section and I'm off to veggies. Every Easter, or thereabouts, I make potato salad.  it's a fine try.  Potatoes, dill pickles, celery, green onions, eggs, olives and mayo.    It's my attempt at my mom's potato salad.  Hers, however, was the better.   

Potatoes had great texture to them, lots of eggs and mayo and she knew just how to season the dish so it didn't taste like wall paper or an exploding spicerack.  I make mine in honor of hers.

When mom's arthritis became incredibly severe, she couldn't use the knife or peel the potatoes, so my dad became her sous chef.  Mind you he was a fine cook in his own right.  The evenness of his cubed, diced, or julienned veggies was stunning.  He wasn't speedy but the result of his knife work was of a caliber that can be seen on the Food Nework.   

I can still hear them working on the salad.  Chop, chop, chop.  Chop-chop-chop.  "Pe-e-ete. Why are you chopping the pickles so small?"  "Hurmph.  Maybe I shouldn't chop them at all".  "Well, when they're that small you can't really taste them".  "Hurmph".  Chop, chop, chop.  "Hurmph". "Pe-e-ete".  

Tomorrow I'll enjoy the potato salad almost as much the memories.