assorted-colored bean lot — Photo by Shelley Pauls on Unsplash

My mom would have been 78 today.

She died two years ago March after a long and devastating battle with COPD (don’t smoke, kids, I fucking mean it). I miss her every day.

One of my favorite things about her—about my weird, dysfunctional little family really—is that she had a great sense of humor. We laughed a lot, and her laugh in particular was truly contagious. It was unapologetic and fucking LOUD and she often guffawed until tears filled her eyes when something struck her as particularly absurd.

One such memory was when I was a teenager.

My brother was rooting around in the fridge and freezer for something to eat. And as many families do, we had a freezer stuffed full of random things we forgot about. My mom was a great cook, so there were always Tupperware containers stacked in the freezer with various leftovers, and on a late afternoon, one of those containers violently attacked my brother.

He opened the freezer door, and without warning or preamble, out jumped a rock-solid container that landed with a dull THUD right on top of his bare foot.

Yowling in pain, my brother exclaimed “OH GOD, FROZEN BEANS!!”

My mom and I were of course startled and utterly confused at first, alarmed at the shouting and wondering what had happened. But as we ran to the kitchen and observed my brother hopping around, yelling at the beans, holding his foot, realizing he wasn’t mortally wounded…

We absolutely collapsed into tummy-grasping peals of laughter.

For years and years, we would encounter life crises or random difficulties where in a quest to cope and find lightness, we would should OH GOD, FROZEN BEANS! as some kind of battle cry or universe-rattling lament that inevitably made us laugh or reminded us that we’re all just meat-covered skeletons hurtling through space on a round rock and that it probably isn’t that serious.

So on this birth anniversary of Pammy Jo, one of the funniest most big-hearted and wonderful people I ever knew, I’m sharing our misfit family battle cry with you for those days when you want to fucking punch a wall (or maybe a person, who am I to judge) and shout into the void.

Instead of just some generic hollering into said void, you now know the power of shouting OH GOD, FROZEN BEANS! (Void not included, pick your poison). It’s impossible to take too much overly seriously when you’re invoking frozen legumes in rage, I promise.

Happy birthday, Mom. You were a real one. Thanks for the laughs. And the beans.

Oh God, Frozen Beans!