On a sunshine-rich summer Sunday, my mom and I are wearing aprons, feet bare on the oak. Untamed curls, grown out roots, no makeup. Oil sizzling in a faded copper pot. I am completely and utterly myself. Dancing around the granite island, she slices up a ripe tomato. A shower of juice and seeds sprouts from the blade. Be better if it was from the garden, she says wistfully. The window is propped open, allowing bird songs to mix with the TV’s old Baptist hymns. Beulah Land, I’m longing for you. Here, my twang is let out of its cage and is free to stretch out. My tongue is a thick copperhead, slowing down every syllable. She sprinkles corn meal into a cast-iron skillet while I mix the cornbread concoction in the large yellow bowl my great-grandmother left to my mother. I handle her prized possession like a fragile newborn. A splash of buttermilk, a heavy dose of salt. Nothing is measured. Okra is frying on the stove, so alluring it causes my mouth to moisten and my patience to wane. The smell fills the room, and for a moment, I am unsure if I am in my kitchen or my grandma’s. My mom speaks of her mom as she combs through her beloved recipe box, packed to the brim with mouth-watering Applachian meals passed down by apron-wearing, occasionally tobacco-dipping, strong-willed, child-bearing hipped women. My grandpa’s corn, frozen to outlive him, thaws on the counter. Handling it takes me back to speeding around his yard in the golf cart and picking apples by placing them in the belly of my Alabama Football t-shirt. When we sit down to eat, my plate is weighed down by bright yellow corn on the cob, reddish-purple slices of tomato, glistening brown pinto beans on top of crumbled up cornbread, crisp green cucumber rounds, green and gold okra, and smokey brown chunks of sausage. It tastes like the whine of a fiddle, the comfort of faded blue jeans, and walking shoe-less down the rows of my grandparents’ garden. Nostalgia hangs onto every bite. They were proud of you, my mom says, for leaving the mountain and going off to school. I pass her a slice of onion with tears in my eyes.