We Aunt Talking About Jemima

Last week was a rough one.

Well rough at least from the perspective of a struggling blog writer.

I had no less than four or five really good ideas for writing and scripting my comic strip. You might’ve said that… and I’m paraphrasing Hedley Lamarr here… that my mind was a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives. Only like Ryan Franklin at the end of last season… when I sat at the laptop or drawing pad, I couldn’t close on any of them.

So when I sat down today at work to make some “sales calls”, one word came to my mind and an entire blog materialized behind it.

That word… syrup.

Now not just any syrup; we’re talking about what I, in my esteemed opinion, consider the crème de la crème of syrups… Log Cabin Maple Syrup. And just so you know, when I say that the L.C. is the top dog of all maple goodness… you should consider it the gospel.

You see the amount of work and what not that my mom had to effort in order to clothe and feed the likes of my brother and I led to a lot of fending for ourselves. Many a mornings were kick started by three primary meals; cinnamon rolls, Homestyle Eggo Waffles and canned biscuits. The later is quite delicious when buttered and dipped in syrup (and don’t judge… this is one of those 'don’t knock it till you try it' things). I just fear that the shortcoming of the canvas that is my blog doesn’t offer enough clarity needed to paint the kind of picture I want to convey toward the abundance of syrup based breakfast I’ve digested for damn near a decade of my childhood.

Just buy into the aforementioned gospel of me… Log Cabin is the cat’s pajamas.

And luckily for me, in spite of a myriad of disadvantages both self inflicted and out of her hands, my mother tried her damndest to never let me want for anything. I never had all the things that made the other kids jealous, but I possessed all the necessities and entertainment I needed to not only survive, but also thrive as kid. While we didn’t always have the money for steak, mom never skimped on breakfast food. And the one breakfast item she never missed when picking up groceries was Log Cabin syrup. Log Cabin isn’t the cheapest of syrups. But she loved it and because of that we loved it too. So she bought it for us all.

I guess the destination that the syrupy path I’ve been trying to lead you to here is this… I sincerely feel that as a current and soon to be new parent, I have a leg up on my mother based merely on lifestyle choices alone. But the thing is, being a good parent isn’t always framed in a Norman Rockwell painting. Sometimes providing love and care in face of incredible odds, even those avoidable and unnecessary is enough to make for an amazing parent. I just hope that like my mom, Missy and I will always be able to provide our children with Log Cabin Maple Syrup.

If you didn’t get it, that last use of syrup was meant to be symbolic.

And yet still very yummy - J