Sunday Snippet: The Musing about Mom and Food Edition

Dear Mom,

I was thinking about you today…that’s not new. I think about you almost every day. Seems like there’s something to remind me of you everywhere I look—violets in the grass, lilies of the valley in my garden, a book you once read to us, a woman wearing a flowy skirt and a teal blue T-shirt who passes by me in the tuna aisle at the Kroger. Believe it or not, it was the tuna aisle that made me think of you today.

Remember when you started Weight Watchers back in the sixties—not sure when, except that it was when Jean Neidich first started the program? It was restrictive as hell. Nothing like the program is today. You had to eat tuna so many times a week, but not made into tuna salad with mayo and pickle relish and served on white bread with potato chips. Nope—just tuna. And organ meat—oh dear lord—the nightmare of beef heart and beef and chicken livers still haunts me. Even with onions, I couldn’t bear the thought of it. But, you made us eat it—well, okay, in all fairness, you never forced us to eat it. It was what you served for supper and if we wanted food, we ate it.

Anyway, plain tuna. It was dry and fishy and well, yucky, frankly. Took me several years before I could open a can of tuna without gagging, and now when I go through the canned fish aisle in the grocery store, I stoop down to pick up my couple of cans of tuna and I think of you—mixing celery and sweet onion with it to try to make it more appealing, all the while, I’m sure, wishing you could dump some mayo in and serve it on white toast.

So many of my memories of you are around food—which shouldn’t be surprising because we were a food-oriented family. I have such fond memories of your pork-and-beans, made with a pork roast and beans you’d soaked overnight, then mixed with catsup and mustard, Worcestershire sauce, brown sugar, and spices. You’d plop that roast down in a dutch oven, pour the bean mixture over it, cover the pan ,and bake it low and slow. The scent filled the house. You served it with corn bread—not sweet corn muffins, real corn bread. Man, that was good. Pam and I talk about it often…and we try to copy it.

I remember Sunday dinners at Nana and Gacky’s with you and he thick as thieves in their long narrow kitchen, cooking fried chicken in the pressure cooker and served with mashed potatoes and peas or pot roast with carrots, potatoes, and onions. Or pork roast with potatoes and green beans… And Thanksgiving when you and Gacky and his sister, Great-Aunt Ruth filled the house with the scents of stuffed roasting turkey, baked sweet potatoes, rolls, green beans, and pie. Oh the pie! Want to know something, Mama? I still use your boiling water pie crust recipe—it’s the best. My apple pie and mince pies may not be pretty, but they taste like home.

Do you remember during the really hard years, right after Dad left? You were working full-time at the grocery store and going to nursing school full time too. How did you do that? I remember you studying, but when did you sleep? On payday, you’d bring home hamburger and buns and frozen fries or tater tots and oh, oh, fresh lettuce and tomatoes to make a salad. And best of all, chocolate milk and marshmallow twirl cookies. It was a feast. I didn’t know then that sometimes those special groceries meant the phone bill didn’t get paid on time or that maybe you had to borrow money from Gacky for gas that week. I only knew how wondrous it all tasted.

Food always makes me think of you—how you made sure we always had full bellies. Food equaled love. It was how we celebrated, how we mourned, how we comforted… There were picnics in the park, s’mores on the beach when we went camping in Michigan, hot dogs on a stick over the campfire, and foil packet dinners—a beef patty, potatoes and onions and carrots that we placed among the hot coals. They cooked while we sat at the picnic table in damp bathing suits and sweatshirts listening to you read Gene Stratton-Porter to us by lantern light, after a day of frolicking in Lake Michigan.

Food was always the answer, no matter what the question or occasion. As I’ve struggled with my weight since I turned 30, there have been times, I confess, when I resented the hell out of you for not making me more aware of genetics and our proclivity for weight gain. I hated that you ignored your regimen after you were diagnosed with diabetes, that exercise to you was turning the pages of a book or stirring a pot of something delicious on the stove. And that you left us way too soon. But you always lived according to your own rules and as I’ve gotten older, I’ve envied that about you. And always, my very best childhood memories involve food and books.

I miss you, Mama, I wish so much you were here to know your grands and great-grands. You’d love them all, and I know, you’d be feeding them pot roast and fried chicken, pie and marshmallow twirls, and s’mores, Then they’d sit enthralled while you read The Harvester or Girl of the Limberlost aloud to them.

Gratitude for This Week: Rain for my flowers, I found a pretty plant holder for my tradescantia to flow over, Got three new editing clients–so summer work! Falling for the Doctor remains on the Amazon T0p 100 Bestselling books for another week and #1 in Medical Romance! I hope that means a lot of read-through. The part for the boat motor arrived safely. 

Stay well, please, please, speak out–it’s the only way to save our democracy, always choose kindness, and most of all, mes amis, stay grateful!