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“Some people like chicken bone bases, some others beef, but if you don’t like mine you’re a damn idiot.”

It wasn’t much of a nursery rhyme, but Mom had a point. Even after she married my step-dad and our dinner talks turned to stock options and investment plans she still made stew the same.

She taught me how to mix the pot with donuts in the stock car parking lot, head out the window, howling at security.

She showed me to pick spices by gashing three knuckles open pushing a store shelf onto a stock boy that tried to cop a feel in the seasoning section.

Together we added my first kiss and half her spit cup, adding scabs, scrapes and mosquito bites to taste. We let it stew all day with lemonade on the front porch.

At dinner, we ate with our hands and caught fireflies in our mouths.