Category Archives: Life at Home

Mother May I?

21 Saturday Feb 2009

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Being the mother of adult children involves more listening than telling.  I know this.  Except this week… when my golden rule of adult parenting was forgotten in favor of my old telling ways.  So where does a mother go from here?  Well….as a first step, being fresh out of the school of hard knocks, I’ll wipe the slate clean to write some new rules—100 times on the blackboard–in hopes that I can somehow commit these to feeble memory.       

 

Rule #1:  I must never use the royal ‘we’ when addressing one of my adult children.  I learned this while caring for the ‘grands’ when Kate was up to her eyeballs in nursing school stress.  Needing a well-deserved break, Kate casually mentioned she’d be going on a date Saturday night.  She wasn’t asking my permission.  She was telling me and I was supposed to be listening.  But instead, I reverted to telling.  “Kate, we don’t have time for a guy in our lives right now.”  My Jiminy Cricket of a husband was quick to bring me to my senses:  “Now, tell me honey.  Who is this we?”  It was time for this ‘live-in-infamy’ motherly faux pas to end with one big apology. 

 

Rule#2:   I must never use the word “why” at the beginning of any question to a child over the age of eighteen.  The use of ‘why’ implies that the questioning mother possesses some innate perfect knowledge that makes her more equipped to save her child from some dreadful mistake.  Considering who I am, and who my children are, there is no way this could possibly be.  Enough said here.  And enough said last night, once Kara got my apology.        

 

Rule#3:  I must never offer a stream of consciousness list of ‘ought-to-dos’ to a responsible adult child who so rarely asks for assistance of any sort–like yesterday, when my eldest son asked me to help him draft a letter and I proceeded to offer him many other tidbits of motherly wisdom that he had not been in the market to hear.  What can I say?  Except for…. I’m sorry Bryan.    

 

Rule#4:   I must never imply that one of my adult children is not a good driver.  To be half-way successful at this, I must keep my mind from drifting back to past driving malfeasances, such as the time Kyle backed his truck into a sheriff’s cruiser in the Dairy Bar parking lot.  That was then and this is now.  We both have many more miles on us now.  And we both know better.  So Kyle, please forgive me.   

 

A good old fashioned, equal opportunity apology is always a strong second step.  Because love doesn’t mean never having to say you’re sorry.   And it’s so telling that the author who thought it did never mothered adult children.  Or played the part of “Mother” in a high stakes real life one-sided game of Mother May I? 

 

 

Midwifery

20 Friday Feb 2009

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When the dog bites

When the bee stings

When I’m feeling bad.

                                –Rogers & Hammerstein

  

Our puppy Max has eaten more rocks.  So I call the vet.  My sister’s dog, Eve, is having puppies under Daddy’s bed.  So I call my sister, Christi..  I watch two lab technicians haggle, before one finally draws the short straw, to draw Daddy’s blood through his paper-thin skin.  Who can I call to fix this?  

 

Sometimes I wonder if  I believe myself when I tell others that Daddy is holding his own.  Dad actually does very little on his own.  My aunt cooks Daddy’s meals, a nurse’s aid helps him bathe and most everything else falls to Christi and me.  Together we get Dad to the doctor, we make sure he has his daily meds, we take care of his housekeeping and his shopping and paying his monthly bills.  So Daddy’s own is really being held up by others, mostly Christi.   

 

While I hate to acknowledge it, time is slipping away from Daddy.  Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that Daddy is slipping away from time, as Dad lives one foot in this world and one planted in a place I cannot see.  Maybe that’s why Daddy’s legs are so shaky.  And though Dad has a walker to help him walk, I wish he had a talker to help him talk.  Dad’s speech is shakier than his legs, as he struggles to string two words together.    

 

One afternoon a week is spent with daddy, where within companionable silence, I do a little housekeeping and we watch a litle television.  When it comes time for me to leave, he hoists himself up from his recliner to send me off with one long hug.  He sometimes acts as if he doesn’t want to let go, as if he’s holding on for dear life.  But then I find it’s my life he’s holding onto, as he struggles to tell me to drive safely.  Last week he had weightier matters on his mind—so he pulled me close to whisper into my ear a string of words spoken so fast they bumped into one another as they tripped to get out of his mouth.  I caught their semblance if not their exact meaning.   And this made him happy.  But not as much as when Christi walked through the door from her day of work. He may hold onto me for dear life, but we all know that Christi is his life.

 

It’s been a day of midwifery rather than housewifery, as I’ve  intervened to bring about or keep life within this world.  Eve is now resting comfortably with six little mouths to feed.  Max has ejected all the rocks but has a surprisingly mild case of Parvo – we are told he will recover ‘just fine.’  And Daddy’s about the same.  With me wrapped in his arms, Daddy’s holding his own.    

 

It’s A Wrap

17 Tuesday Feb 2009

Posted by in In the Kitchen, Life at Home

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ilovelucytitlescreen1It was standing room only in our Mesta Park dining room last weekend.  I was extremely happy to be lighting candles on Kyle’s twenty-first birthday cake.  And to be honest, I was filled with relief.  There had been plenty of calzones in spite of  the near kitchen catastrophe that almost left none.     

 

While an over ambitious menu worked against me that day, it was mostly Sunday’s cooler temperature that set me up for my latest Lucy Ricardo dose of disaster.  Cold weather always sends my bread dough into a slightly heated oven to rise.  And then I always remove it before preheating the oven.  Except….this time…when I remained blissfully unaware I had just set three lovely batches of risen dough to bake at 450 degrees.  Fifteen minutes later, freshly dressed for party success, I unwittingly returned to the kitchen to play the starring role of my very own  I Love Lucy episode.  With my hubby playing his normal supporting role, I opened the oven door to stand trancelike before this huge glob of almost baked dough, while this stream of consciousness emptied unfiltered from my whirling disbelieving mind into a kitchen saturated with the fresh aroma of baking bread.   

“I cannot believe I did this.”

“Can you believe I did this?”

“What are we going to do now?”

Being the very intelligent man that he is, my husband said absolutely nothing — unlike Desi Arnaz, he knew no splainin’ from me was going to avert this dinner party crisis staring us in the face. And as for me, destined to play the part of the witless heroine, I desperately grabbed for my own happy ending as I removed the heavy glob from the oven to carefully peel the baked bread away from its bowl.   Underneath the golden brown crust, still soft and gooey, was about a third of the dough… enough for me to stretch into small calzones for everyone, with two to spare.  Well….make that one.  Because as we were all celebrating in the dining room, our standard poodle Max was having his own private party in the kitchen, woofing down the calzone he’d swiped off the countertop. 

 

With kitchen mayhem finally under wraps, it was time for the spotlight to shine on Kyle and the lovely little traditional birthday cake so fitting for February birthdays.  Made from a hand-me-down recipe of Grandma Betty’s, but baked in the shape of a heart, the cake did not resemble the famous I Love Lucy satin heart logo.  But it should have. dsc01219a2    

 

Grandma Betty’s Birthday Cake

Best made 8 – 12 hours before serving

 

Cake: Bake one white cake mix prepared according to package directions in two 9” cake pans.  Allow cake to cool on baking rack.

Frosting:  In a small bowl, blend 1 ½ cups of whipping cream with the boxed contents of one Betty Crocker Home Style Fluffy White Frosting Mix.  Chill one hour.  Then beat until stiff peaks form.

Filling & Topping:  1 can of Wilderness Cherry Pie Filling

 

To assemble, spread 1 cup of frosting on first layer with ¼ of the can of pie filling.  Add top layer and frost sides and top of cake.  Add remaining cherries to top of cake.  Keep refrigerated between servings.