We don't see each other that often anymore, and we haven't seen each other's parents in years, and there is the Southern custom of asking about one's parents. 

It goes, "How's your mama an' 'em (and them)?" - which translates into, ``In what condition is your mother and your other first of kin?" 

We took turns talking about our parents. "My mother puts terrible guilt trips on me," somebody said. "I'll call and tell her I'm on my way shopping and she'll say, `I wish I had the money to go out shopping.' " 

"Mine does the same thing," said somebody else. "I won a trip to Las Vegas from my company and I called my mother and told her about it. 

"She said, `I guess that means you won't be coming to see me in a long time.' I said, `Mama, it's just for a week.' She said, `I may not be here in another week.' She's in perfect health, but I called her every day from Vegas just to make sure she hadn't contracted some sort of terrible disease." 
 

Mother's big worry
 

I said my mother still worries about whether or not I'm wearing clean underwear because I might be in a wreck and the doctors would see my dirty undershorts. 

"My mother does that, too," somebody spoke up. "But it all means they really love us." 

It does. It's funny how our attitudes change about our parents as we get older and they get older. These people were our enemies when we were children. 

They were the ones who made us eat our vegetables, made us go to bed earlier than we wanted to, fussed over our grades, lectured us and wouldn't allow us out of the house with dirty underwear. 

But you forget all that, and you would miss the guilt trips if your folks weren't around to send you on them. 
 

Dad and the biscuits
 

"Tell them about your dad and the biscuits," one friend asked another. 

"God, it still makes me cry," she began. 

"Every morning when I go to work, I go right by my father's house. And every morning - I've been doing this for years - I stop by and drink coffee with him and he makes biscuits for me because he doesn't want me going to work on an empty stomach. 

"One day, I overslept and I knew I wouldn't be able to stop by and see him. The weather was awful. It was cold and it was raining. 

"So I called my dad and told him I wouldn't have time to stop by. He said, `You won't?' I could hear the disappointment in his voice, but I said, `Daddy, I'll stop by tomorrow morning, so don't worry about it.' 

"So I get in the car and I start driving to work. As soon as I rounded the corner to drive past the house, I saw this figure standing out in the cold and rain with a sack in his hand. 

"It was Daddy. He was out there waiting for me so I would still have my biscuits." 

Everybody in the room was in tears when she finished. 'Tis the season to be thankful. Thanks for parental love, the purest love of all.