Back in the mid-80s, my mom took me and my brothers to a farm to buy the makings of dill pickles. It was five miles and a whole world away. Mom was probably in her early thirties at the time—roughly the age that I am now—and she already had four grubby young children. Somehow, it seemed like a good idea to take said children to the country to buy bushels or pecks or whatever the hell you call them of cucumbers and dill.
As an official pickle helper, the trip to the farm was a thrill. It was Pickle Day, by God, and the boys and I thought we might just spot some cows or perhaps a chicken. Even the smell of manure was a novelty. When that distinctive odor met our nostrils, we giggled and held our noses with dramatic flair. Mom bought the cucumbers and dill from the farmer, and we all helped carry baskets of produce back to the car, burying our noses in the fresh dill.
After trucking the whole lot of children and farm-fresh produce home, Mom took out the huge pot that under normal circumstances was a much-abused drum. She canned dozens of jars of pickles, and by the end of the day, they were neatly lined up in the cupboard. Pickles were only one of the many foods that Mom canned throughout the year, and it was always a family affair. We did peaches, pickled beets, and just about every kind of jam imaginable.
I know that not every family ate as well as we did. Not every kid was raised on fresh, from-scratch bread and cookies. I value these memories because to me, they symbolize another era where people took the time to do things the old-fashioned way. Often the hard way. My family didn’t have a ton of money, but my mom took the time to make the best for us. It was one of the ways that she showed her love for us, and herein lies my parenting pickle.
When she’s grown, will my daughter reminisce about the chicken nuggets and sweet potato fries that I throw in the oven? Will it make a lick of difference that they’re organic? I do know how to cook and bake, and I sometimes do. It’s a matter of choice. After working all day and then commuting, I don’t always have the time or energy to make fabulous meals. I aspire to be an organized meal-planner, but I often fall short, and by Friday, it’s take-out time.
I know I’m not the only parent to feel this way. Just last week, a co-worker told me that she had a horrifying realization that the homemade spaghetti sauce that she slaves over—chopping, cooking, and canning—is largely unappreciated by her family. She makes the sauce because her mother did the same. The tradition means a lot to my coworker, but her husband and kids would probably be just as happy with Ragu. Should she stop making the sauce? Give up a piece of her family culture?
I asked Josh if there’s anything about his childhood that is analogous for him—something that his parents did that he doesn’t feel equipped to do for our daughter. He took my question seriously, but he couldn’t come up with anything. It got me thinking: Is the guilt that I feel unique to being a mom? When I think about it intellectually, I know that I’m sometimes too hard on myself. After all, Josh, Linnea, and I are all relatively well fed, and in addition to my job, I have a lot of hobbies and volunteer responsibilities that take up my time.
Even my mom has let the pickle-making fall by the wayside. She was a stay-at-home mom until I was in high school, but once she started working full time outside the home, our food traditions changed. And you know what? Some of them are just as memorable. We got to order pizza on Thursday nights, and because we’d been raised on homemade, whole-wheat, vegetarian pizza, there was something very sinful and delectable about pepperoni pizza from Domino’s. On Fridays, Mom picked up Italian bread from the bakery downtown, and we would crowd around the table for spaghetti and “Friday Bread.”
I’m trying to strike a balance between trying to recreate some aspects of my childhood for Linnea and trying to be my own kind of parent. I won’t be making homemade dill pickles anytime soon, but I’ll probably tell Linnea all about it as she munches on her first store-bought baby dill. When Linnea is old enough to help, I may even talk my mom into finding that huge pot in the garage and flexing her old canning muscles.
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Blog Housekeeping
I want to know:
Is there something about your childhood that you’d like to share (and/or feel pressure to share) with your own children or other special kids in your life?
Do any men out there feel similar pressure, or is this a woman thing?
I had a great time yesterday at the first-ever Minnesota Blogger Conference, and I started this post in a session with Kate Hopper, a writer and writing instructor who blogs at Mother Words: Mothers Who Write.
If you’re in Minnesota and like to run, please consider running the Bolder Dash next Saturday, September 18, at Lake Nokomis in Minneapolis. It benefits Bolder Options, a wonderful youth mentoring organization, and I am on the committee. I know that many local bloggers will be at Walk Run Hope to benefit the Liz Logelin Foundation that evening, but I challenge the crazy among you to do both (this one’s in the morning)!
I am 100% with you Emma on the “mommy guilt factor”! I’m pretty sure it is a woman/mother thing not a man/father thing. I feel guilty that I can’t produce home-cooked meals every night of the week but I simply cannot do it and maintain my sanity. I am a single mother, I work full-time, I go to school full-time and I have to maintain my household. I still cook and bake several times per week but I find that at least one night per week I let someone else (restaurant) do the cooking. There is a light at the end of the tunnel for you, the guilt does get less and less as your child gets older but alas it never fully goes away. Or at least it hasn’t yet. There is always something you will feel guilty about as a mother, this is normal. I have not yet found the answer to make the guilt go away but if I do, I will be sure to let you know.
I’m glad I’m not alone, Jessie! (For readers who don’t know, Jessie is my sister-in-law!). Like my mom, your Mom is a cooking and baking superstar. At least they taught us well, even if we don’t have the time to do things the way they did. I’m glad to hear that the mommy guilt may get better as Linnie gets older!
Emma, when you were very young, your own young mother didn’t know what to do because you only wanted to eat olives and pickles.
No one can do everything and the myth of Superwoman needs to die. Your mom and I chose to stay home to raise our children and we did not have careers, we had jobs. Other choices were to work at fulfilling jobs or just as laborers to make ends meet. It is not the food we eat, or the strawberries we pick. It is knowing that we are loved, that our children are precious and know they are the center of our world.
You and Josh will make your own traditions as your family grows. Just think, Linnie is only 18 months old, and over the years you will find what she will remember her whole life.
I definitely like “the myth of Superwoman needs to die.” I agree wholeheartedly. I think it’s up to women like me to get over this guilt and move on. It’s something I’ve been working on for the last year. You’re right that THE most important thing is for children to know that they are loved!
It’s funny that you bring this up Emma, I too am often riddled with guilt and my kids are 11 & 15! Am I a bad mom because I send lunch $ with my kids instead of packing a lunch, like my mom used to do? Does it make me look bad if I miss a parent-teacher conference to hear the same things over and over, every year? Are frozen waffles and pizza considered “well-rounded”? I, like you, also work full-time and unfortunately our bills & the fact that I LOVE to shop will keep it that way for a long, long time. My mom was also a SAHM so my kids will not have the same luxuries as we did growing up. I’m pretty sure my husband doesn’t feel guilty for working long days and some weekends. I agree with the first commentors that a) men will never feel the guilt that mothers do and b) the supermom myth needs to die! Take it from me though, because it feels like just yesterday, soak in every single moment with your daughter.
Thanks for weighing in, Jennifer. I think frozen foods can definitely be well-rounded.
It’s all about the big picture! It’s interesting that you say your kids won’t have the same “luxuries” that you did growing up. I assume that you don’t mean “stuff.” Good food for thought!
I am not a parent and I don’t expect to be one anytime soon as I am single and only 23, but when it comes to sharing things with my kids someday, I know I have to share the original Star Wars movies, old classic animated films and shorts, and the video games I grew up on.
Star Wars was such a huge part of my childhood I can’t wait to pass that on to the next generation, those movies helped me become the geek I am today and are fun to reference and talk about. Still haven’t figured out how I want to present the prequels though. :/
I am huge animation buff, so much so I’ve given thought to getting a PhD in the field to teach in some college somewhere. I feel todays kids cartoons are boring and unimaginative. I collect animation collections on DVD (and now blu ray)wome of which go out of print and are impossible to find in stores now, to watch now and preserve to present to my kids someday so they can have the opportunity to see these cartoons that now we don’t see on TV ever and probably still won’t for many years to come.
Video game collecting is my last point (and yes I know this is probably the longest comment you’ll ever get and is basically a blog post unto itself, you’ll ever get but you asked for it) and I collect and take care of them really well so I can keep playing them and even have a video game library in the basement in a house I hope to own someday and let them have fun and to be able to play the games I grew up on with my kids someday and have them be apart of their childhood, that would be really sweet.
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Yes! A man weighs in! Thanks, Adam! I love that you feel so strongly about sharing your love of Star Wars, video games, and animated films. That’s fantastic! With any luck, your kids will actually think they’re cool! Go for the PhD if you feel so compelled. I studied film and media studies in college (my minor) and I LOVED it. I remember having a conversation my senior year about the future of writing, and how it would all be about hypertext, and language would be more experiential. Hello, blogging!
Ahhh, our memories are kind to us, so LuLu will have great ones no matter what you do. It’s all relative to our time and circumstance. That said, we were damn hippies of a sort emerging from days when The Whole Earth Catalog was a primary reference. Also, mom’s mom and dad were earth people from NoDak, and we were children of all these folks who grew up in the depression. My mom was a gardener, canner, cook, at home in much the same way. Only when we were in maybe junior high did she start working outside the home.
The less romantic side of things is that yo momma, some years, did all this day time stuff, and then went off to jobs at night, leaving you all stuck with dad at bed time – thus, the Amazing Adventures of Boll Weevil and a few reads through the Lord of the Rings.
I started cooking and baking at age 12 in another world in which my folks thought it was reasonable to leave me in charge of two younger brothers, in the middle of nowhere, for three or four days at a time sometimes.
That’s no big deal, accept that now that our circumstances are really different, I am cooking, baking, and so on, again, and that just means I get to sit here reading with a couple of home made baking powder biscuits all buttered up with (store bought) s-berry jam.
I’m considering starting my own blog on the quest for the perfect biscuit, and can report that thanks to another cook, baker, guy, of a younger generation I’m getting close.
Observations – some of those pickles were moved at least four times within two states, but we held on for dear life. The great strawberry adventure is still in my mind like a movie – probably some unique post in the future, maybe along with a note about baking a cake in DC.
You all are part of an interesting generation, one in which a higher percentage than normal seems to have avoided the generational swings we see sometimes, you know, republican parents and socialist youth and vice versa. I know this because you guys seem obsessed with posting picture of the food you make and that can’t be real bad! Also, for Linnie’s future memories, her daddy is preserving grains for the winter regularly, and that is about as romantic as it gets!
Yesterday afternoon I had two bowls of lentil soup made by a 21st century Earth Mother, and I never had anything tastier or healthier, period! We should all just do what we all can do I guess.
Ah, Dad. You’re quite the Renaissance man. I think it would be fantastic if you started a blog on the quest for the perfect biscuit. I never thought about it, but you’re right–Linnea may not get canning lessons from me, but her dad might teach her how to bottle beer. This will surely make her popular in high school (Oh my God!).
Just a note, my line about “you guys seem obsessed with posting pictures” should have been “youR guys…” what is with that? Guys are always posting pictures of food they’ve made, I even have. Women don’t seem to. Ideas?
I have the same struggles with trying to live up the ideal of the stay at home mom while holding down a full-time job. My mom made a hot dinner every night, and often had cookies ready when we got home from school. I know it’s really not possible for me to achieve that. I do like to cook, so I’ll often spend hours on weekends putting together hearty, well-balanced meals. But we also have at least one night of take-out, and I guess it says something that my kids favorite meal is macaroni and cheese and broccoli.
That said, I especially like the input of Adam and your dad. It made me remember that not every fond childhood memory has to be of homemade food. I have enjoyed sharing my favorite childhood books with my daughter. I read her Anne of Green Gables at age 5, and by the end she was in love with Gilbert Blythe. I hope that she will remember our nightly reading as fondly as she does the food traditions we do have.
You make some really good points, Susie! I am going to keep the book thing in mind. I can’t wait until Linnea is old enough to start on the “Little House” series!
I had a great childhood but I can’t think of one thing that my mother did that I wish I were doing. There were seven kids in my house and both my parents worked outside the home so everything was always quick and easy. My mother didn’t feel the pressure to be Superwoman. I only have two children, who are now young adults and when they were young I felt pressure to give them a home-cooked meal every single night. As they got a little older and their tastes changed I realized that they didn’t give a hoot if I cooked or not. As long as they had something to eat.
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It’s good to hear the perspective of a mother who is a few years ahead of me on this journey!
What keeps me canning and cooking is the occasional, unexpected fist-pump “YES! I love that stuff!” when I serve something that a nine-year-old has no business caring about. You see, you get one accolade and you become a slave to its possible reoccurrance. You know, Ragu would probably do,but it’s not in my nature to serve up “meeting expectations” when I’m capable of “exceeding expectations.” I grew up with a mom who grew up post-depression. She was also a working mom, so my Supermom image had been long-ago infused with down-home goodness meets feminist. The truth of the matter is, we are leaders in our families. And as we anticipate what’s next, it’s good to reflect on the past and what worked. But then we have to attend to our present and innovate for our future because we don’t live in the same kind of world we had when I was a kid. So if my future tells me to innovate with chicken nuggets, my past will make sure they’re 100% chicken, and my present will offer them shaped like dinosaurs! Maybe with a little home-canned marinara drizzled on them!
I love it! Thanks for sharing.
Dear readers, the idea for this post started w/ a conversation with Lisa after she spent part of her weekend making homemade spaghetti sauce. Yum!
I hear ya sister! I have always loved to cook and to bake. During my pregnancy nothing sounded more awful than to actually cook a meal – we ate out a LOT! Since Liam has been born, I still find it difficult to get a home cooked meal done on a regular basis. By the time I pick him up from grandma’s, get him fed and spend time with him before he has to go to bed, it’s 7:30 at night and Brian and I still haven’t eaten! At that point, it is usually whatever I can whip up the quickest without much effort. Some days are better than others.
There are so many things that I remember from my childhood surrounding food. It has always been something that has brought our family together – whether just our immediate family or our extended family. Food has been such an important tradition in so many households. Growing up, I had a rock star mom (and still do) that made everything from scratch and seemed to have the next month of meals planned out (I now know that is not true…sorry Mom!). Hard to live up to. What she did instill was the importance of what sitting down together and having a conversation about your day. More important than what you are eating is who you are doing it with and sharing that moment with one another.
You’re so right, Rachel. Josh, Linnea, and I sit down at the table for dinner every night–even if Linnea is more interested in playing with her food than eating it. And yes, you do have a rock star mom (my mother-in-law!).
Emma, I love this, and I’m so pleased that it arose from the exercise at the conference. It was wonderful to meet you in person, and I look forward to following your blog!
Best,
Kate
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Kate, I’m so glad that you found this! I’ve been waiting to start writing about motherhood. There are so many things to say! It was great to meet you, too.
Ah yes, Emma, Rachel, Jessie – children of mother’s that stayed home and cooked. Rachel and Jessie, I know that your mother is a fabulous cook. MY mom on the other hand was an OBGYN and never made it home in time to make dinner or never made it home to have dinner – because, as you know, babies come whenever they feel like it! We had a housekeeper that cooked. Whoever it was at the time usually made good food. We had a Mexican housekeeper once that would buy the full fish so she could eat the eyes. Gross. Those cooking skills (from my mother) were passed along to me. I have no idea how to cook. But I do think it’s fun when I do.
But my favorite memories are playing cards or games with my parents. Cuddled up in this soft blue chair with silver arms. I wish I had that table and chairs. They’re fabulous.
I asked Spencer. He used to love learning about and following baseball with his dad. (He says while we’re watching the Twins game.) He also liked that they always had dinner together. I concur. Loved that.
I don’t know how your mom did it. It’s hard for me to imagine having such a crazy schedule, but it’s great that you were still able to have dinner together on a regular basis. My family played a lot of cards and games, too! That’s something I’ll definitely want to do with Linnea.
I think that all mom’s have that kind of guilt. Now that my kids are grown, only one still lives at home and he never eats with us, I have this kind of guilt over not cooking as much as eating out more often. So, I think it’s just a woman’s thing!
I think you can have all kinds of memorable moments with your kids that don’t have to always revolve around food, but in my opinion, they just want to spend quality time.
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You’re right, of course!
Oh, the selective memories of my childhood. Selective, as I seem to remember some stuff, but certainly not others…it appears that what’s important now as a Mom of two young girls triggers what I thought was important then too.
One of the traditions that I am loving that Ellie & Caroline are fulling immersed in right now is Little House on the Prairie. And, I’m not just meaning the books — I’m talking the storybooks, chapter books, visits to THE Cabin and Museum in Pepin, WI, the shows on the Hallmark Channel and now…dressing up as Mary and Baby Carrie for Halloween. We are even having “Laura Ingalls Wilder Week” here at our house…I’m beginning to believe it should be declared a National Week, to bring everyone back to the simpler days of home cooked food, limited travel (our Camry is our horse & buddy this week), imagination games w/ each other, no email, texting or phones. Ahhhh…the simpler life…it makes my heart jump with joy to know that even at a young age, we can connect on a very special, simple tradition.
That’s fantastic! I was a HUGE fan of the books (and later the TV series). I definitely plan to read them to Linnea as soon as she’s old enough, and I love the idea of dedicating a week to the simpler days. Good idea!