Flashback

The rain pretty much shut me down as well. The change in the weather has drowzed me up -- sending me to bed early, enabling me to sleep through the night, yet not be able to keep my eyes open during the day.

Not much progress has been made on that needlepoint project or catching up on recorded television programs because I’d get so sleepy that I have to put the project away, turn the television off, lay back on the couch and go with it.

And Starbucks is probably going bankrupt, because I haven’t been in for my daily cup since the 16^th.

I did make it to the market yesterday, during a break in the rain. While turning the corner into produce, I saw a man with a huge sack of potatoes in his cart, and it gave me a flashback that showed me why it is I take the more expensive and less healthy route of frozen potatoes, frozen vegetables, and why it is I so hate to cook.

The oldest of six, my old school mother felt responsibility for the family should be placed on the shoulders of the eldest child. Consequently, I not only was the only child held responsible for housework, I also was the one assigned responsibility for peeling potatoes, washing the greens, shelling peas, preparing the green beans, etc., I even had to clean the chitterlings.

I was my mother’s sous chef.

It’s amazing how our childhood impacts what we are and do as adults.

I don’t eat much of anything I have to peel or clean.

I also don’t eat beef hamburgers or beef, period. And it was at the barbecue potluck, when I took turkey dogs and there was a discussion of why I wasn’t eating the regular hot dogs, that I made the connection to something from childhood.

When it was just myself, before other siblings came along, I had a dog named Skippy.

When mom moved out of Los Angeles into a house she bought in another city, Skippy did not come with us.

“Where’s Skippy?” I asked.

“I gave him to the butcher shop”, snapped mom. “They ground him up and turned him into hamburger meat”.

Looking back, I can’t figure my mom out. She wasn’t necessarily mean, she wasn’t necessarily abusive, she wasn’t warm, generous, loving either. I know I couldn’t talk to her as she didn’t like me asking questions about anything, which may be why the snappish answer, and I remember her as being the kind of person that would leave something out when people asked for her recipe.

They say we become our mothers as we age. I look like her but, no disrespect, I hope I never become anything like her.