The joke around here is that I don’t need to spank because hearing me scold is a million times worse to endure. I can probably count on one hand the actual number of times I’ve raised my voice into anything approaching a scream, but I do think I manage to get my point across well. Still, a well-timed yell can emphasize a point in a way not soon forgotten.
Well everyone, here’s some bad news: the er…experts have decided that isn’t OK. No screaming, no spanking and we’re not supposed to lie to them either.
Believe me, I’m not some superior parent, but I also don’t need to scream at my child to get him to do what’s expected. He’s had exactly two tantrums in four years and still remembers having all of his toys taken away. I didn’t scream, I didn’t stand there negotiating-I grabbed a roll of garbage bags and started dumping toys into them. It was a good month before he saw many of them again. You know, the silent treatment and a very stern look work well if you’re consistent.
I’m not sure what these articles hope to accomplish other than make parents feel even more inadequate than they already do. How awful that parents are being made to feel guilty for disciplining their children. For heaven’s sake, that’s nothing to feel guilty about. Letting them run wild and do whatever the hell they want should elicit guilt. What an incredibly screwed-up world we live in. Look, I’ve seen some amazingly bad parenting over the years that is deserving of scorn. My mother used to tell my sister she was supposed to be an abortion. That’s bad parenting. I seem to remember a fair amount of door slamming, though that kind of slacked off after we moved to the new house with the less well constructed doors/walls/etc. Coming from solid plaster, who knew you could actually kick through drywall…? The best was when my parents got a second phone line put in so they could call us on the phone, in the next room, to scream at us. That was sort of the precursor to emailing the person sitting next to you. Screaming at your kid to pick up their shit kind of pales in comparison, no?
I don’t want to extrapolate based on my own experiences, so I won’t. I will say that I have to seriously wonder if something else is going on with people who spend so much time thinking about how they were yelled at/spanked/punished as children. Wouldn’t this sort of thing be cumulative? I mean, if you get treated fairly decently but mummy completely loses it because the linen closet isn’t colour coordinated the way she likes it-well, isn’t there room for that sort of thing over the course of twenty years? Honestly, all joking aside, sometimes we really did deserve to be punished. We were terrible children. Oh goodness, if Danny ever pulled half the crap I did at his age, I don’t know what I’d do. Seriously. These articles never acknowledge that children can be horrendous little beasts.
At some point we started expecting perfection of ourselves in respect to parenting. I wonder what that teaches the little ones?
People lie about their weight on driver’s licenses so often that many states have discontinued asking for it. Nebraska still has it, though I never lied on mine. I actually weigh less than when I received my license. Go figure. But I have a great story about lying on the application.
This had to be around 1975. I went with my mother to get her license renewed at a very busy DMV in Chicago. She filled out the application; handed it to the clerk who then (very loudly) announced so all could hear:
"Who are you kidding? You don’t weight 135 pounds, you’re at least 170."
That didn’t stop her from lying about her weight, but she never lied quite so grandly again.
Years ago, when I was a wee one my mother and grandmother used to drag me shopping with them on Devon Avenue in Chicago. By the time we were through with the grocer and produce store, my wee nerves were already on the frazzled side from the constant bickering from them. Last stop was often a dime store run by an elderly orthodox Jewish man. It was an interesting shop-sort of dark, with every available space crammed full of shit you never imagined you needed. There was also a spectacular aisle of toys.
Every time, before we’d step through the door, my mother would warn me that the old man hated children. Hated them. Of course that meant not touching his toys. No, no, mustn’t touch or the old man with the black hat and beard would toss us out of the store. I’d stand at my mother’s side, trying to get a glimpse of the beaded change purses and paddle balls down the aisle that I’d been warned not to even look at. Apparently the old man hated children that looked at his toys as well. I’d try to hide behind my mother when making our purchases so he couldn’t see me, sure he’d only scream:
"A Child! I hate children. Get out! Buy your plastic tablecloth somewhere else."
I remember asking my mother once why he had all those toys if he hated children? Surely he wouldn’t stock such wonderful balsa wood gliders and paper dolls if he really hated children, would he?
"He puts them there to make the children feel bad" was the best my mother could come up with.
So fine, the old man with the beard and black hat on Devon Avenue hated children, but he filled his store with toys to torture them-seemed reasonable enough to me. It’s not like my mother would lie about something like that…
Fast forward to the other night. My husband is telling Danny that he mustn’t touch something or his hands will fall off and he’ll have to live the rest of his life without hands and that every time you see a person without hands it’s because their parents told them not to touch and they did and just look at ‘em now! I’m sitting there listening to this when it hits me:
He didn’t hate children. My mother didn’t want to buy me toys! Holy crap, I can’t believe it took me four decades to figure it out. He must have wondered what the hell was wrong with the kid that didn’t even want to look at the toys.
My mother was a talented sculptor. This skill was not overlooked by her high school art teacher, and she and a few other students were selected to make a nativity for the school to display. It was quite the project; from the way she’d tell it. So Christmas rolled around and they set it up in front of the school and it began to draw crowds. Well, as things go in large cities, someone decided to steal it. Figuring it might have been pranksters, they set about the neighbourhood doing detective work.
One of the largest cemeteries in the city was just adjacent to the school, so naturally, they went to walk the grounds and have a look. The caretaker saw the group of teenagers and inquired what business they had there in the middle of the day when school was in session. The way my mother would tell it, his English was quite poor. They tried using rudimentary language skills and sign language to express that they were looking for statues. Finally, my mother, exasperated said
"Bodies," and tried to pantomime a statue.
"Bodies?!" the shocked old man screamed, spreading his arms wide, " You want bodies? We’ve got bodies all over the place."
It is 9:28 PM, and I’ve finally had a chance to sit down and write. From 5 this morning, I’ve been baking, cleaning and generally exhausting myself in some (pardon the pun) “lame” attempt to prove I’m not completely crippled. At least I have a ton of home baked items and a clean house to show for the pain. I’ll be walking with my cane tomorrow, but for the present anyway, I may congratulate myself for being such a stoic idiot. Stoic idiot filled with pain medication. Is this post rambly and incoherent yet? Give it a few paragraphs.
Today might well have been the apex of my baking skills. I don’t know how I could possibly improve upon what came from the kitchen over the course of the day. At 5 AM the first thing I did was boil a pot of water, pre-heat the oven and take the two trays of homemade bagels from the icebox that I prepared the night before and gave them the boil/bake treatment. For anyone doubting if boiling them in baking soda and water before baking really makes a difference, let me assure you-it does. Having lived in a decidedly non-bagel eating state for the last five years, I was really missing the genuine article that we used to get from Katz Bakery in Chelsea, Mass. (which if you live near there, do take the opportunity to check them out. The neighbourhood looks worse than it actually is, and there’s almost always street parking in front. Everyone else, check my cooking blog later in the week and I’ll post the recipe).
I was certain the artisan breads would be a colossal failure. The dough was so wet it was sticking to the sides of the mixing bowl as it flopped around for the better part of ten minutes. I literally poured it into a greased bowl and was unable to turn it due to the glutinous mess it had become. With patience and long slow rising however, it started to take shape. What I ended up with were two very chewy/crusty loaves with a moist, very large, open crumb. Again, a year ago I would not have imagined it possible to make something like this at home. I’ve finally rigged-up a system to get a suitable amount of steam in the oven which really helps with the crust development in those first twenty minutes. I discovered that bendable, thin plastic cutting boards make an excellent peel for transferring this sort of soft, sticky dough to a tray. Much, much less expensive than the specialty peels for sale.
Dessert was a pineapple pie. I’m at the point now where I can make a pie crust from scratch faster than I could de-frost a commercially made one. The price difference is about twenty five cents of ingredients to paying around three dollars for the packaged ones. Same for the bread-artisan loaves like that are a good $3.50 and up (assuming you could even find anything that comes close around here. Dharma Bakery in Omaha is the exception. I ate so much of their French bread while I was pregnant that my husband once ran into the owner doing a delivery-run at the local supermarket and asked him if he would autograph the bag as a Valentine’s day surprise, which he did-and yes, I was surprised).
Living so far out in the sticks and being on a limited budget, I’ve had to learn how to make just about everything myself-which is fine, as I enjoy cooking. I’m exhausted, but baking/cooking/cleaning never really feel like “chores” rather, they help the days to move along and at the conclusion, I have something to show for it. And really, knowing I can produce these baked goods for pennies makes it all that much more satisfying. Primarily, I maintain the cooking blog so that Daniel will have something to look back at where my recipes are all in one place. My mother was a horrendous cook, but I still would have loved to have her recipes for nostalgia’s sake. I never can be completely certain that I won’t be overcome by a desire to stew a skinless chicken in V-8 juice and sprinkle some dried oregano atop it calling it “Italian Chicken.” Actually though, that particular disaster *is* preserved in a PTA (Parent/Teacher Association) cookbook from 1971 that asked all the mothers to contribute recipes. I had no idea she’d offered anything when I went flipping through it one day and stumbled upon her name (and I knew it wasn’t another person by the same name as the odds of two women having the name “Lolita” with our unusual surname would be a bit much for suburban Chicago). I’d wager she was the only Lolita in town as well. She had already graduated High School by the time the book came out, something she was always quite thankful for. For a few years she went by her middle name of “Frances” but that was worse, as she had to endure Talking Mule jokes from us. Anyway, mother’s Italian Chicken recipe has survived, though I feel awfully sorry for anyone that might have thought to try it. Still, it would have been nice to have copies of other things she made. L’s grandmother wrote out her lentil soup recipe for him twenty five years ago and though she’s long gone, I have affixed the recipe card into Daniel’s baby book so that he can have a recipe that came from his great Grandmother. My family just wasn’t sentimental.
Danny spends a good deal of time with me in the kitchen. He has a small step-stool to sit on and I let him play with bowls and wooden spoons so that he may participate. It’s awful when mothers do not permit their sons to cook as they grow-up unable to boil an egg. After my mother died, the old man had to learn to prepare food and do laundry for the first time at 60 years of age. I once caught him trying to boil hot dogs in the plastic package. I also seem to recall him putting liquid dish detergent in the dishwasher. My grandmother certainly didn’t do him any favours by keeping him from learning a few domestic skills. I used to go visit him and there’d be a pile of laundry awaiting me to do alterations and repairs. The man could not even sew on a button. While his inability to sew and cook (and clean-my heavens, you cannot imagine the filth men will live with when they are alone) didn’t prevent him from finding fault with the cooking, sewing and cleaning of others (so easy to be critical) he really had no idea how to care for himself. Eventually, he got to the point where he was content eating sandwiches for dinner each evening.
I want to purchase a play kitchen for Daniel. As things stand at present, his favourite books are my Women’s Day Encyclopedia of Cookery that was a weekly giveaway at the A&P in 1966. My mother used to keep them in a cabinet high above the kitchen range. I discovered them after she died and they appeared largely unused though every once in a while I find notations in them. That’s so jarring-suddenly seeing my mother’s script and recognising immediately that it was hers. She did have a lovely hand. I keep thinking perhaps I should leave messages for Daniel in my cookbooks-“hello son, did you know that black beans come out looking much the same as they did going in?”
I do stand by the assertion that knowing how to prepare food from scratch will save tremendous amounts of money over the course of a year. Eating better, less expensively-why on earth did they stop offering home economics classes in public school? I read recently that students were shown a carrot and had no idea what it was! We have gone so far away from the natural state of things that people no longer know what the unprocessed item looks like. How sad. I sincerely hope that Daniel grows up to know a courgette from a banana.
I’m going to take my exhausted self to bed now so I may be bright and energetic for the Friends of the Library Book Sale* at the Swanson Library in Omaha tomorrow. Once a year they do children’s books 4 for a dollar-I think tomorrow is the day. Most library sales are full of junk, but this one seems to have the sort of books I enjoy on a regular basis. I suppose it could be an indication that I enjoy a much different sort of selection than the typical Omaha library patron-but it may also be luck. Many of the books do not come from the library but are privately donated, so the odds of finding good first editions that are not library stamped are pretty decent. The book sale may well be the only thing that keeps me living in Nebraska.
*My spouse has always thought it would make a fantastic comedy sketch to have people queued at the library when some pushy idiot comes cutting ahead of people saying “Friends of the library, coming through. Step aside please, Friend of the library…” only to have an even bigger jerk come barreling through yelling, “Trustees of the library-keep moving, get going, Trustee of the library in a hurry, coming through…”
Eyeing the large tin of California black olives in the bargain aisle I paused recalling how my Mother used to ration them because they were "fattening." Olives were usually reserved for the relish tray on holidays alongside the radish roses, pickled cauliflower and carrot curls. Serving myself a couple of olives with the too large silver tongs that probably belonged to the ice bucket, she’d warn me to "lay off of those" lest I get fat. Getting fat was, to my mother’s mind only second to becoming an axe murderer, in fact, had I taken up swinging axes at people she’d likely have called it good exercise. Any accomplishments we children had in our lives were acknowledged with, "Yes, she made good marks in school, but she’s getting fat." The be all, end all of our existence determined by the daily weigh-in she subjected us to before leaving for school.
Who knows which weight loss meeting she picked that bit of information up at? One place she attended did public weigh-ins prompting not a few of the women to resort to enemas an hour before weigh-in. Anyway, olives were out along with avocados and any other dangerously fattening fruit and vegetables waiting to sabotage the diet she kept herself and her daughters perpetually on. Oddly enough, armed with all this dietary information she still felt justified forcing liver (broiled) on us along with liberal use of margarine and other hydrogenated fats.
It makes me so sad to think that she probably liked olives and denied herself the enjoyment of them in pursuit of a body type that genetics would see to being unattainable. I wonder, had she known that she’d be dead at 56, would she have let herself enjoy the olives anyway? How I wish I’d said something. How I wish she’d at least lived enough to see the Mediterranean food diet craze where everyone was slathering pasta in olive oil touting the benefits of the nutrient rich stuff. Really, I’ll bet her tune would have changed had she lived to see olive bars at supermarkets with Kalamatas and Niscoise varieties easily obtained. Instead, she denied herself the black olives that tasted of the tin they were packed in because pound for pound they had more fat and calories than say-carrots-like anyone would consume enough of either to matter. There was no rationalising over moderation with her-my mother lived in a black and white world where there was little room for nuance, grey, or olives.
