Three times on Mother’s Day, I’m going to raise my glass to my mother Eveline. For breakfast, it’s going to be black coffee with a cheese Danish. For lunch, it’ll be a cup of pea soup and a grilled cheese sandwich. For dinner, I’ll have a good Prime Rib with baked potatoes, fresh chives and horseradish cream.

My thinking is if Eveline hasn’t come back yet as diva ectoplasm, then I need to GPS her spirit by eating her comfort foods. Food is love, comfort and memory, all bundled into one. And eating a grilled cheese sandwich will be like inhabiting Eveline in a time of innocence, long before she became cleaning obsessed and overwhelmed by her Obsessive Compulsive Syndrome. Back when she was at her happiest – sitting in a Greek coffee shop in Queens late at night with Daddy on their first date, eating perfect grilled cheese sandwiches, warm and molten on the inside, crispy on the outside as only the Greeks can do. A grilled cheese sandwich flipped onto its back not once, but three times on a greasy hamburger grill.

Mother, you were a pistol. But if Daddy or I would ring the doorbell and say we brought you something nice to eat, we could always count on the dead bolts being drawn back and the door opening a crack and you yelling, “You can’t come in and mess everything up all over again!” But there would be your hand darting out and snagging that pastry shop box or the doggy bag from Lawry’s.

Oh, food was love, wasn’t it? Happy Mother’s Day, Eveline. May you eat in peace.