I was about 4 years old....

I remember going to mom one morning and telling her my tummy hurt. She looked at the clock and said, "It's probably that you're hungry. It's only another hour until lunch time. You can wait that long."

I hadn't had breakfast. That's the way it was. Every day. She took really good care of her babies, but when we started growing up a little (started to 'ugly up') we didn't get the same care. We weren't old enough to do some things for ourselves and she wasn't doing them for us either.

It's not like there was cold cereal in the cupboard. The market was just coming out with all the fun stuff (Cheerios, Alpha Bits, etc.). Dad didn't believe in feeding cereal to humans-cereal is made from grains and grains are animal feed. Whatever. So she couldn't even fix us a bowl of oats, or Cream of Wheat, or Germade without suffering dad's wrath.

By the time I was in grade school I went every morning with nothing in my tummy. That's the way it was. She only had the money that dad brought home. He'd cash his check and who knows what he did with all of it, but he didn't bring all of it home. She had to pay the bills and make do for groceries as best she could. To dad's credit he did bring home most of it and made sure mom had enough to pay the necessaries. Dad did plant a garden-I don't remember ever seeing mom work in it. I don't remember seeing dad work in it very often either. I do remember dad complaining about her not preserving his harvest. Of course after dad planted it he didn't touch it. Mom did take the hose out and water it as often as it needed. I remember weeding in it-a lot-but not as much as I and my kids did in our garden when I planted it.

Mom had enough grocery money to buy the eggs for dad's breakfast between paychecks. And dad would stop at the day old bread store and pick up the bread we needed for the month-which usually covered his workday sandwiches, us kids' school lunch sandwiches and his & mom's toast for their workday breakfasts. She shopped the sales and had enough for our dinners as well.

By the time I was a pre-teen I was fixing the family breakfast every Saturday & Sunday. Pancakes. From scratch-no mixes existed as far as I knew. I had that recipe memorized. I made maple syrup from Maplene, sugar & water and a stick of margarine about 5 minutes before it was time to serve it. Once in a while mom would fix scrambled eggs. But that wasn't very often. Mostly I fixed pancakes.

I learned how important it was for the mom to make sure meals for the children were taken care of-when they were little and couldn't fend for themselves. I learned the value of planting, caring for, and harvesting a garden. I learned that taking care of your children and husband is love-service, yes-but it is love.

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Unknown said…
So, the song from the music video is called "What I've done" You may recognize it from transformers, as it was the theme song for it. The band is Linkin Park (they combine rythm, rap, and rock to create a broad variety of music like the one you saw/heard). They're also one of the most influential bands world-wide at the moment. With songs like that with deeply rooter meanings you can see why.
September 22, 2008 at 10:48 PM
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