Fixin' Biscuits

I am Southern through and through. I am made of homemade biscuits, boiled peanuts, grits, ‘ma’am’s, ‘sir’s, and humidity. I push buggies, not shopping carts. I exhale ‘y’all’ like it's air. 

And I wouldn’t change any of it, y’all. 

Except I did change one thing.

At some point, I removed a word from my Southern vernacular. Please don’t kick me over the Mason-Dixon Line. It’s just one little word, I promise.

It most likely was initiated in my college communication classes, probably during the same class where I learned that the ‘t’ in ‘often’ is silent. So, you can imagine my surprise when I discovered that I had been using the word ‘fixin’ wrong all those years. 

Therefore, I was fixin' to make a change. And it stuck. For better or for worse, I’ve been ‘about’ to do things ever since.

So, why did it nearly burn my biscuits when my kids recently started calling me Mom? 

I am Mama. I’ve been Mama since words first came out of their cute, bald, toothless noggins. 

But, just as words in my everyday vocabulary have evolved, theirs have too. It could be worse, I suppose. Mom is better than the occasional Bruh or Dude I answer to.

Words are so fascinating. Many words live for generations, others have been dead long before my lifetime, while some need to disappear off the face of the earth entirely. Words are powerful. They can lift. They can destroy. They can produce action, both good and bad. 

Words change lives.

There is a reason why the jaw muscle is the strongest in the human body. Our pie holes hold a lot of power, y’all.

I can’t imagine a world without words.

Or good ol’ Southern biscuits. 

Small, subtle changes for good in the words we share with others can yield big results. Because it’s just a tiny bit of yeast that’s needed for rising.

And if we don’t have anything nice to say? Well, y'all, we should be like that ‘t’ in often, shouldn't we?

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