At my age I have had plenty of moments where I stop and
think about how my actions resemble those of my mother. Heck, I even have those
moments where I feel like I am more like my father. But have you ever had the
feeling that you turned into your
mother? I did, and it was so scary that I had to physically stop everything I
was doing to look in the mirror to make sure I was still ME.
It was a typical Tuesday night. I came home from work a
little late but knew that the kids would be expecting dinner the minute I
walked through the door. Don’t think I didn’t have it on my mind all day;
should I order pizza? Should I make mac and cheese? Are sandwiches on the menu
for tonight? Ugh, why can’t dinner just make itself (and spoon itself into my
mouth while it’s at it!)? These questions were all going through my mind when I
suddenly remembered that we had leftovers from the night before.
Let’s rewind a little and allow me to tell you a little
about the picky eating habits of these people I call my family. Three out of
four of them do not…I repeat…do NOT eat leftovers. Juanito was not raised
eating leftovers and my two little ones have no idea what leftovers are. Lola,
well she is my non-picky, non-judgemental eater so I can serve yesterday’s
cuisine on her plate and she will respectfully decline to say anything bad
about it. This is probably why she is my favorite human on the planet! I
digress.
The previous night we had ground beef tacos and white rice.
There wasn’t very much left over at the end of the evening, but to save space I
put it all in one container and stuck it in the fridge. Since it was all in the
same container when it came out of the fridge, it seemed the logical thing to
do to heat it up together in the wok. The operative word here is ‘together.’
(Fast forward to
everyone sitting around the dinner table with a lovely plate of white rice and
ground beef mix.)
As I am about to take the first taste of my culinary
delight, I hear a voice that sounded very far away. It didn’t just sound far
away, but it was also accompanied by a twinge of disappointment and a healthy
dose of whine. The words I heard were, “I don’t want this. I want a taco.” I
can still swear that the words came out of his mouth spaced apart as if he were
speaking a sentence and there was a period between every word. Imagine it to
sound like this: “I. Don’t. Want. This. I. Want. A. Taco.” Got it? In Wolfie’s
defense, the plate didn’t look too appealing; it looked like mashed potatoes
with roly polies in it—true story. But he didn’t even try it. He didn’t even
give it a chance to surprise his mouth with its soft, warm deliciousness that
can only be achieved with a perfectly seasoned meal reheated with unconditional
love. (I acknowledge that I am stretching it here and I am just trying to help
you imagine my Like Water For Chocolate moment
in my kitchen.)
My body went into auto-pilot
mode. It decided to do something so against my core that I am still surprised
two weeks later…so surprised that I am dedicating a whole blog post to it. I
stood up from my chair, walked away from the dinner table, and went into full
Julia Childs mode. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, Julia Childs. I went to the
refrigerator and took out fresh ground beef, two tomatoes, half an onion, and
began to make a fresh ground beef dish that I could use to make Wolfie some
tacos. As if that weren’t enough, I took out my measuring cup and precisely
measured a cup of rice, rinsed it in cold water until the water was clear, and
boiled it until it reached a fluffy level of perfection. I was so entranced in
the special meal that I was making for this picky child that I didn’t even
notice that everyone else had finished eating dinner and had cleared their own
dishes from the table. All I knew was that I had to heat up some tortillas at
the exact time the rice was done steaming and the ground beef was as brown as
it was going to get.
I walked over to the refrigerator
and opened the door. The brightness of the bulb made me realize that I had not
turned on the light in the kitchen. It wasn’t completely dark in there because
the dining area and kitchen are all one big space, but the fridge light did
serve to take me out of my trance. It was then that I looked over to the table
and finally realized that Wolfie was no longer there. “It’s ok,” I thought. I
figured I had a few more minutes to get his table setting together. I proceeded
to take the sour cream and shredded cheese from the fridge because truth be
told, I was going to make this the best damn meal he had ever had in his short
life!
Table was set. Tacos were served.
Rice was sprinkled with just the right amount of soy sauce. I even put two ice
cubes in his sippy cup and made sure that I served his favorite juice: apple.
But where was Wolfie? Shhhh. Do you hear it? Me neither. I didn’t hear any
noise in the house other than the faint noise of the television in the living
room. I walked over to turn it off and that was when I saw him. Wolfie had
fallen asleep on the couch waiting for me to make his dinner.
I looked over at the cable box. It
read 8:13. Juanito was behind me at this point and said, “Babe, I am so sorry
that he fell asleep after all the work you did.” Did Juanito watch me the whole
time? Did he think I was some mad woman who was hell-bent on pleasing a
three-year-old child and giving in to his culinary whims? Who was I the woman
who let her dinner go cold because the mission was to give the boy a meal that
wasn’t reheated, that wasn’t scary and unknown and wouldn’t be found in an
episode of Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives?
I don’t need to spell it out; I
had turned into my mother. At that precise moment on April 30, 2013, the memory
floodgates were opened and I began to reminisce about all the separate meals my
mother would make as we were growing up. My father loved his spicy food. My
elder siblings were always trying fad diets. My little brother, older sister
(Claudia), and myself would eat the tasty non-spicy traditional foods that my mother
would serve. Everyone ate what they liked, and my mom made it all. We were all
a bunch of little “Wolfies” telling my mother what we wanted and it would magically
appear on our ceramic, mismatched plates on that little kitchen table that only
could sit four at a time.
I told this story to my mom on
Mexican mother’s day. She quietly listened to me as my voice became more
agitated when I talked about how I finely chopped the tomatoes and the onions
so they wouldn’t be visible in the ground beef. I even described in complete
detail the color of the sippy cup and what type of spout it had on it so that
the apple juice wouldn’t spill. When I was done telling her the story, I asked
her in Spanish if what I did made me a crazy mother. She said to me (in Spanish,
of course), “It doesn’t make you crazy. It makes you a mother. It’s what we do
when we are mothers.” She never threw it in my face that she used to do that
for us as children. She never said that she hated having to make three
different meals on some evenings. She simply said that it is what we do.
I am blessed to still have my
mother with me. I speak to her almost daily; sometimes I speak to her ten times
a day because I am so neurotic about getting her recipes right the first time.
I won’t ask myself if what I do for my kids makes me a crazy mom, or an
over-protective mom, or even if it makes me a good mom. Do you know why? Because
none of that even matters. “It’s what we do,” she said. And that, my friends,
is the best excuse of all to be who I am…my mother’s daughter.
Until next time, I leave you with
the homework of thinking back to the precise moment when you knew you had
turned into your mother…or when you knew you turned into your father. I bet
that if you try hard enough, there will be more than one defining moment in
your life!
Enjoy your ride, my friends. Life
IS good!
