I’ve never been much of a shopper. I’d rather be doing pretty much anything else.
I think new coworkers figure it out quickly – I can see their wheels turning as they look in my direction and wonder whether I’ve got day-of-the-week outfits hanging on a rotation schedule in my closet.
My lackluster shopping habits garner thankful praise from my sweet husband about his “low-maintenance, frugal wife” and her simple ways.
Until it concerns his food. And we were out of yogurt.
When he arrived for Christmas, Dad brought a bag of fruitcake cookies and a Georgia fruitcake for all of us to enjoy here on the Johnson Funny Farm in rural mid-Georgia. My soul was warmed into holiday spirit when I imagined Aunt Sook of Truman Capote’s A Christmas Memory announcing: “Oh my…it’s fruitcake weather!” as her breath smoked the windowpane in the frigid kitchen. I wondered if, true to the story, she had ever really sent one of Haha’s whiskey-laden fruitcakes to President Roosevelt, whose Little White House in Warm Springs Dad and I had just visited two days before Christmas. I sliced away merrily, setting out the sticky colorful cherry and orange candied-fruit and nut pieces on a plate.
Trouble is, most folks don’t like fruitcake. You have to have deep, multi-generational Southern roots and some serious value upbringing to ever acquire a taste for it. That’s why I was so proud that my Oklahoma-born/Georgia-raised husband took a quick liking to fruitcake and savored some of the brick. Even still, we had a lot left over. His affinity for it came in handy in the absence of more suitable breakfast groceries.
With gratitude to Felix, today’s Pantoum celebrates our nut-blended Georgia roots!
Go Dawgs!
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Georgia Fruitcake Pantoum
I hadn’t bought groceries
we’d run slap out of yogurt ~
Georgia fruitcake…for breakfast?!?
Dad’s script: COFFEE TIME -SANTA
We’d run slap out of yogurt ~
fruit on the bottom vs. fruit throughout
Dad’s script: COFFEE TIME -SANTA
Ga. Fruitcake : our nut-blended roots
fruit on the bottom vs. fruit throughout
only 107.5 calories per ounce!
Ga. Fruitcake : our nut-blended roots
Santa’s January answer
only 107.5 calories per ounce!
Georgia fruitcake – for breakfast?!?
Santa’s January answer
I hadn’t bought groceries
Common Threads 
Not a fruitcake fan even with a mom raised in Southern Mississippi & a dad who’s civic organization’s primary annual fund-raiser was selling fruitcakes; there were stacks upon stacks of them in the dining room every November-December, and the site of that rectangular conglomerate of varying shades of brown flecked with bits of red did not entice me. I do, however, LOVE your poem-homage to the alternate breakfast of champions!
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Jayne, thank you for sharing your memory of the stacks of fruitcake and their lackluster appeal! You are in the majority fruitcake camp for sure! There is magic in your words – the scene plays out and comes alive with that table of fruitcake bricks, and that is what I love most about writing. The richness of memory and knowing something about your childhood table at holidays is sacred.
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