Yesterday I wrote about how my mom taught me to be compassionate to others. This morning I wanted to write about her hospitality. This is an activity that I want to improve great on.
My mother is, and still is, a domestic goddess. And for as long as I am aware has been comfortable and proud of her position. Yes, there were times, I've heard, when she cooked my dad some pretty atrociousness meals that got the "What is this? Yeah, don't do that again." I can't remember what those meals were, but both husband and wife laugh about it a great deal when it's brought up. It must have been pretty bad. :) There were times when her sense of decorating and frugality crashed rather harshly. She once ripped apart a comic book that was worth a bit of money and framed the pages, because she thought they were cute. Again, "Yeah, don't do that again."
But when I met my mother :) I knew no such woman. I might have her up on a wee bit of a pedestal, but I'll keep her there, because it's coming up on Mother's Day. Mom, you can crash my dream sometime next week. Right now just let me immortalize you with my rose colored glasses.
However, back to my own perceptions:
My mother was amazing. She cooked for her little family of three from scratch. She made polenta (I very much disliked my Aunt Lisa for giving her that recipe), quiches (which I hated for years), lasagnas (much better), chili, spaghetti, and on and on. I don't remember eating processed foods. I remember homemade cookies, fruits, homemade soups, etc. The woman made bread from scratch routinely. I don't think she ever bought a bag of sliced bread... ever.
One of the annoying things about my mother's love for the kitchen and feeding her family well was lunches. I didn't mind it when I was homeschooled, because she would make burritos a lot or heat up leftovers. In elementary school? Just plain annoying. Who wants all the healthy stuff? I wanted my processed cafeteria pizza like my other friends were enjoying. My best girl friends, day after day after day, would pull out of their lunch box another peanut butter and jelly sandwich made on white sliced bread. After being in the lunch box with thermos and apples the sandwiches were always oozing purple slime and were twisted like pretzels. Later, for snack, everyone seemed to have those super cool fruit roll-ups. The different color sheets would come out. Sometimes they were rainbows. Later in my school career the sheets began to have shapes cut out, so you could peel apart the shapes and play with them while you munched. Now that, in my mind, was a mother's love.
What did I get in my lunch box? Leftover homemade soup in a thermos. Maybe some pretzels, if I was lucky, and a sliced apple. The apples were always sprinkled over with some lemon juice so as not to turn brown. A homemade lunch. Day after day. Why couldn't my mother show me how much she loved me by making me a darn peanut butter jelly sandwich on white bread with "fruit" on a plastic sheet?!?
But that was my mom. She showed her love to us by making us good, healthy food.
She was known for her hospitality. When I was an older teen we had a really nice apartment with extra space, so our house was one that could be called if a passer-by needed a home for a night or so. We hosted traveling Christian actors, missionaries working with Romanian orphanages, and once an annoying single who never seemed to stop talking.
She made small lunches for our super small Vacation Bible School team one year. I think she made tuna sandwiches once for them and they all raved about them. She was just known for her food.
I must say she did feed us Hamburger Helper once for Thanksgiving. I think that was on a bad year in the midst of moving, perhaps. I tried making a joke about it. Well, let's be honest. As a young teen the joke was more of a "joke" with intentions of saying, "Where's my turkey?" There was a batch of chili whose beans were crunchy. Once she made potato leek soup (family favorite) but didn't wash the leeks. We learned quickly to mostly swallow the soup instead of chew it, because our mouths were full of grit. But for the most part she was spectacular.
And what am I known for? My three-ring circus and... my mother's oatmeal cookies.
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