When we were kids we could count on spending Memorial Day with a bunch of other kids we didn’t really know. My parents and a group of their friends from college took turns hosting a Memorial Day picnic. I remember there being five or six couples and sets of kids, though I can only remember the names of a few. The Hartmans, the Fritzs. I know there were more. Every year we’d end up in someone’s backyard, and some years they’d all end up in ours.

As a kid I was never really comfortable at these events. I didn’t know the children of my parents’ friends and we had little in common. Some of us were shy and introverted, me included. I remember liking the adults a lot better than the kids, and hanging around the dinner table listening to their talk and laughter. The adults had a great time reminiscing and catching up. I can’t say that any of the kids looked forward to the day.

I do remember eating well. And I remember my mother’s summer staple – potato salad. In fact the last time I visited her down in Alabama I asked how she made it and she told me. I didn’t write it down. I figured I’d remember, and besides, I could always ask again. Or so I thought.

I’ve been experimenting, trying to get it right for years. I’ve asked lots of people what they put in their potato salad, and I think I’ve almost got it figured out. So today while remembering those Memorial Days of fifty years ago, I made potato salad, complete with the snipped chives from my garden, almost exactly the way Mom made it. With a little of my mother-in-law’s version thrown in.

I haven’t tasted it yet…it’s settling into itself in the fridge at the moment; I think it needs some time to meld. But I’m hoping when we have some tonight I’ll remember only the good times from past Memorial Days. I hope all those kids I didn’t know have grown up to be happy adults with kids and grand-kids of their own, and that they have better memories of those college reunion picnics than I do.

And I hope their potato salad always turns out exactly the way their moms used to make it.