Mamas Sweet Potato Pie

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This page is dedicated to my mother who was born on August 31, 1935 and passed away on July 28, 2020

To say she was a good woman is an understatement and I’m not just saying that because she is my mama. I say this because she was caring, loving, selfless, and so giving. She was born on a farm in one of the southern most parts of Georgia to a family of sharecroppers. If they ate it then it was because they grew it or grew something to trade for it. She didn’t have an easy life but she didn’t see it that way. Looking back on the stories compared to how things are now I don’t know how they survived sometimes. She was one of 14 children and her mama would cook three meals a day for all of them. Her mama passed on recipes and cooking skills to her and she in turn passed it to me. I remember being little and waking up early morning, mama would already be in the kitchen to cook breakfast, and there I would sit on the counter beside the stove and watch her every move. Usually I was snacking on a leftover pork chop or piece of fish from the night before while waiting for her to fry my egg and cook the grits. If you came to her house and left hungry it was your own fault. Even if she didn’t really have it to give, she gave anyway.

By blood she was my great aunt, my grandmothers sister. My grandmother was born in 1917, and was the oldest girl of the 14 children and my great aunt (mama) was first from the youngest. My grandmother was old enough to be her mother. My grandmother passed away when I was very young, my biological mother gave me to my grandmothers sister when I was two years old and she raised me as her own until I was grown and moved out on my own. Her children were all grown when she got me so she was an older mother with lots of patience. I learned the old fashioned way of doing a lot of things, friends my age didn’t have that advantage and most grew up on tv dinners, fast food, and impatient working mothers. To say I was blessed to call her mama is an understatement.