Sundays in our home are greeted with the smell of bacon. As each of us begins to slowly rise out of a previous night’s slumber, we immediately are greeted with the air that one wishes they could taste.
The entire house is enveloped in the smell that says, “This is Sunday.”
As the door begins to open/close, others make their entrances- some quietly, some not so much. Individual servings of coffee begin to overwork the Keurig into overtime- each doctored to one’s liking- sugar, Splenda, black, Hazelnut flavored creamer, half & half, or just plain milk. Conversations and catch-ups ensue. Some gather at the dining room table, some in the comfort of their bedrooms, some in the galley kitchen which seems to decrease in size by the minute.
Sundays are so much more than food.
They are the gathering of extended family. They are the freedom from a face-full of phones/computers/gaming. They are young children talking to aging grands. They are anyone is welcome. My mom is the ultimate wife, mother, grandmother. She shows love through good deeds, selfless work, and food.
And she does each with pleasure.
I sadly am the apple that fell from that tree and rolled quite a distance. I can’t recall a single time that I have cooked a roast, full chicken, ham, or bacon- ever. So, these Bountiful Brunch Beginnings of the day- provide more than my usual predictable start- yogurt, fruit, and granola. Boring at best- but on a constant replay. This morning mayhem of people, voices, food, and constant motion is the meal that no one turns a nose up to.
We all eat. We all sit. We all enjoy.
This is a far cry from how I was growing up. My mother was THAT mother. She was the one that had dinner prepared nightly and on the table promptly by 5:00 p.m. The meals were balanced with a meat or protein, vegetable, and a starch. She would always serve my father first- always. It was her gesture, good deed, that showed her love and appreciation. And he was always appreciative in return.
The exchange nightly was their predictable, not so boring, pattern.
We would then sit, all four of us, around our kitchen table, as we did not have a formal dining room, and we would talk about our days. I would usually make an unsatisfied scowl, now commonly referred to as the resting bitch face. I had it mastered by the age of two. I would then follow it up in close procession with the, “We’re having this again?” This was my bitchy predictable pattern.
Repeated nightly.
No good deed went unpunished. And punish I did. Why was she fixing his plate- when he could easily do it himself? Why were certain meals repeated weekly? Why did she derive joy from cooking for others, like a 1950’s housewife? Enter the Judgement Zone. Different generations often view the same event with different take aways. Hers was that she was a doting wife, mother, and example. Mine was that she was a subservient.
They say that you don’t fully appreciate your mother until you are one. Noted.
And now. . . I am one. And now. . . I have those children that stick their noses up into that same bitchy air and utter those same words that make one want to grit her teeth and strangle the abrasive four letter words that are at the cusp of being released at any minute’s time. Meals are- yep, repeated. Why? Because that’s what we have in the cabinet. That meal that they are now refusing to eat, because they no longer like it- they ate just last week. The meal they are requesting now, they refused to eat last week.
It is a Guessing Game that no one has the ability to guess right.
I am losing before I even begin. The kid that requested that we sit at the dining room table nightly- now retreats to the solitude of his room within ten minutes, if he eats at all. Unlike my mom, I do not derive joy from cooking for others. I do, however, now derive joy from food. I derive joy from those Sunday morning gatherings where she shows her love through her selfless good deed of preparing that Morning Baconed Breakfast and opening her home to all.
I fully appreciate it.
elizabethavron 