Lady & Sons Just Desserts More Than 120 Sweet Temptations from Savannah's Favorite Restaurant

Introduction Have you ever been sick and tired of being sick and tired? Well, this was the position I found myself in in 1989. I wanted to be able to act instead of react. I wanted to make choices for myself instead of taking what came my way through the actions of others. I wanted to be my own woman. Back in 1965, after I had graduated from high school, my daddy -- so badly -- wanted to send me to school in Florida to study to be a dental hygienist. Yuck! I had just finished the most cram-filled fun social three years of my life at Albany High School and now I was supposed to be a dental hygienist? It was obvious a mad coon had bitten my daddy. "I'm sorry, Daddy," I said, "I just can't bear the thought of spending the rest of my life smelling people's stinky breath. But," I went on to say, "how about the Patricia Stevens Modeling School." "Absolutely not!" he said. "I will not turn my eighteen-year-old daughter loose in Atlanta." Since we couldn't agree on the education thing, I would just solve all the problems by marrying my high school sweetheart. One night my mother slipped into my bedroom and sat on the side of my bed. The look on her face was sad and full of concern as opposed to the soft sweet smile she normally wore. "Paula, I want you to give careful consideration to the decision you've made, because this commitment should be for a lifetime. If there's anything that bothers you at all about the young man that you have planned to marry make sure it's something you can live with, because contrary to what you may think you don't have the ability to change people." Well, I just couldn't believe it. My daddy wants me to be a dental hygienist and my mother is suggesting that my marriage might not be a perfect one. Of course, my fiance was perfect, and I was going to be the perfect wife and mother. So the wedding was held, and I think it took me all of three months to realize I would have made the perfect dental hygienist! The dreams of a perfect life were shattered seven months after my wedding. My daddy died. How could this charismatic, wonderful, forty-year-old man whom we all depended on be gone from us forever? The pain this brought to our family was devastating, and I thought that things could get no worse. But four years later my beautiful mother died. She was forty-four years old. Besides myself, Mother left behind a sixteen-year-old son, my little brother, whom I adored. By this time I also had two little boys of my own under the age of three. The pain I felt for myself was riveting, but the pain I felt for my brother, Bubba, can't even be put into words. I have searched for them, but cannot find them. So, at the ripe old age of twenty-three I had the responsibility of raising two babies, and trying to continue the job that my mother had started with one of her babies. And don't forget the husband. Over the years, I began to have symptoms of agoraphobia. At one point, I wondered if I would ever be able to leave my home again. Panic attacks became a way of life. I was at my lowest when I knew I could no longer leave the house to accompany my children to the activities they loved. If my boys couldn't walk, they didn't go. So in spite of the deep love I had for my family, I found I was not the perfect mother. I was not the perfect wife. And I didn't have the perfect husband. When I was forty, my husband announced that he was accepting a position in Savannah, Georgia. I had to leave behind everything that I knew and loved. I was barely able to function in the town in which I had been born and lived my whole life. How was I ever going to function in a strange new city on the other side of the state? Well, after arriving in Savannah I handled the move by going to bed for two months. There seemed to be no end to the tears. I hadDeen, Paula is the author of 'Lady & Sons Just Desserts More Than 120 Sweet Temptations from Savannah's Favorite Restaurant', published 2006 under ISBN 9780743290203 and ISBN 0743290208.