Yesterday was Father's Day and I know I should've been thinking of my father and I was in a way which I will tell you later. But first I want to tell you what my daughter did for me and the memories that it brought back. She drove to Memphis to pick up my granddaughter from her father who she was visiting and then came straight to my work and brought me a hot meal from Cracker Barrel. My grandkids, my daughter and my wife set down with me and we ate our dinner. I ask you what more could a father ask for than for his daughter to think that much of him.

It reminded me of the Father's Day that we had when I was young and we would travel to Hurricane, Mississippi to visit my mother's father. Or were we actually going there for the wonderful home-cooked meals that my grandmother and my aunts prepared which my father seemed to love? There's where I was thinking of my father.

You see in both my mother and father's family, food was the soul that brought the family together and it was my grandmother Whitehead that was the ultimate cook in our families.

My grandparents lived through the first world war, the depression and the second world war where they had to sacrifice, to make the best of what they had. She not only learned how to make things taste magical, she learned how to make them last and how to preserve and do things that are more of a lost art today. I wish I had set down with her and found out more of her secrets rather than having to now try and discover what those secrets are without her. Even my mother didn't know some of my grandmother's secrets even though they cooked so many times side-by-side with my aunts.

I know I have told you about the wonderful buttermilk biscuits that only she could make and the wonderful juicy southern pecan cake she would bake. But everything she made was just unbelievably delicious, it was a paradise for a young boy and teenager to set down to her table, not just because of the magical flavors that one could explore, it was also what went into the preparation, the love and the women all talking furiously while making these dishes and having the greatest times of their lives. It kind of reminds me of the Randy Travis song "Forever and Ever Amen" where old men sit and talk about old women and old women talk about old men. It was so unbelievable you could taste the love that these women put into it with every bite you would take.

It is so true that the love between the generations seems to have changed, we don't prepare things as much as we used to, we just go out and buy them. I guess my point is that just like my daughter making a 6 hour drive back and forth to Memphis and then bringing me the hot food. It wasn't necessarily the food, it was the love that made her do it that just warmed my soul. So it's also the meals that my grandmother prepared to show us how much she loved us. If she knew we were coming, there would be biscuits galore made that day so that I would have some fresh biscuits when I got there because she knew how much I loved them so and she loved to prepare them for me.

I know your family too comes from the same generation that mine did, so when one of the women in your family prepared food on Father's Day it was to show how much they loved all the Fathers in their family past and present. What more could you ask for on a Fathers Day!